Re: [hylafax-users] newbie questions

[Gil Bahat <coutal@netvision.net.il>]

On Tue, May 08, 2001 at 09:46:12AM -0500, Albert Everett wrote:

> I've known about HylaFAX for years but am just now considering using 
> it, since we've had another fax server in place.
> 
> We have a prospective client that would like to have a feature on his 
> web site, where a visitor visits a product page and is able to enter 
> her fax number, hit the submit button, and have a program 
> automatically fax the correct product info to her.
> 
>  From reading the documentation, it sounds like it should be easy to 
> write a cgi that takes form input and does a system call to fire up 
> sendfax to send the document to the visitor. I was surprised that 
> this sort of application wasn't mentioned explicitly in the mail 
> archives.
> 
> Is there some reason that this sort of application should be a problem?

technically, there should be no problem doing this sort of thing.
however, it is probably not wise to do so, for security and practicality.
you would have to sanitize the recieved string for modem commands,
check the number for validity, block toll-based numbers and face
denial-of-service attacks. you might also want to filter long-range
calls, since you might not be able to discern whether a number in a given
country is a toll-based service or not.
from the practical point of view, it just seems much more practical
to have the user get the info/form via the web and then print it himself
on his local printer.

> Another question - is there a way to pre-save documents to be sent in 
> native fax format so that ps2fax or whatever doesn't have to do a 
> conversion every time someone requests a document? The set of product 
> documents is small, but I expect request load to be high.

afaik, saving them in faxable (g3?) tiff would mean that no conversion will take
place.
 
> Albert
 
Coutal
-- 
i bet you've seen this sig somewhere before...
===================== Gil Bahat =====================
================ coutal@netvision.net.il ============
====== world leader in wasting bytes since 1981 =====


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