Can an E-mail be used to trigger scripts ....?

Okay, this may sound crazy. I'm trying to figure a way to use my desktop mail client (like Thunderbird -----EDIT: After the responses received, I realise this is totally unreliable; I meant as long as my inbox (no matter how I access the inbox) gets the email ------) to 'trigger' a cronjob script. Is this possible at all?

To elaborate, let me describe why (hypothetically):

I have 1 million users on a 'gaming' website
Each time any user reaches a high score (let's say 1000) for any game, they can redeem the points and buy stuff with it.
They first need to 'redeem' the points, which they'll be charged $0.10 for, so they'll click on the redeem button
They'll be taken to a payment gateway to send the 10 cents, and that will simultaneously trigger an email which will be sent to my inbox (if the payment was successful). If the payment failed then the email will not come to me.
Instead of sitting at my desktop 24/7, I want the email to be the trigger, so that the points can be sent to their profile (on my website) instantly and automatically.

I was thinking of using cronjobs with the email as a trigger, but I have no idea how that could work. Do I configure my email? The cronjobs? I'll be using cPanel via windows to do everything, so I guess it's not too customizable...I really wish this could work out somehow.

Is this possible or is it crazy?

I'd a similar situation, whenever there is a new email, send an FB message.

MailGun have something called 'routes' which will basically capture emails and send it to a webhook. That webhook will receive "from", "to", "subject", "body" and everything related to that email. You can then parse that email and send email to the corresponding user.

Thanks, this looks almost like what I was looking for. I'll check it out as soon as possible :-)

use a postfix target pipeline. You can even put in business logic

<name>     unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe
  flags=DORX user=<linux_user> argv=<path to script>

it will just pipe it in via stdin so a classic argv / argc application

thecodingmachine.io/triggering-a-php-script-when-…

for php :)

Just don't forget to use php.net/manual/en/book.mailparse.php and check if the body is correct and use a dedicated email (probably with a hash in front of it so the spam attacks are not that probable)

i hope that helps.

Honestly I never expected this question to receive such sensible answers ^.^ Thank you for this, email piping (it seems) is exactly what my situation would require. I checked out some email piping solutions, I saw linux-related stuff only, then I found a solution right in cPanel! (I use Windows) cPanel has an Email Filter that allows you to pipe/parse the emails received and execute a script for every incoming email, and wow that's exactly what I need. Thanks so much for this headsup (once again!)

one of the plattforms I am programming for uses this mechanics to receive emails and put it in the correct customer timeline. Gg This is how we did it although just the core principle because our problem is a bit more complex than yours :)

As long as it helps I am happy. :)

you can simply make a change in your webapplication so that when it has to send a success email to you, it also sends the email with the points to the "client" (user who made the payment).

I actually thought of doing this, so that the 'Pay Now' button would trigger the script to send the points to his account instantly, however it's not the best practise. The points should not be given to the client until the bank actually sends me a verification email with the reference number. So this solution will not be practical, in case the bank does not even receive the payment. That would cause unnecessary 'point reversals' etc which would complicate matters more than if he only got the points when my bank received the payment from his bank.

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Can an E-mail be used to trigger scripts ....?

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Can an E-mail be used to trigger scripts ....?

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