Chapter 6. Automating communication
This chapter covers
- Sending email
- Processing email
- Exchanging messages with AIM
- Exchanging messages with Jabber/XMPP
With the proliferation of communication technologies like the telephone, the internet, and cell phones, people are more connected than ever before, and recent software advances have allowed us to automate these communications: electronic call center menus, widespread email, instant messaging (IM) bots, and so on. This sort of communications automation software can make your life much easier when it comes to handling interactions with coworkers, employees, and customers. For example, you might want to send out an email to 500 customers when their product has shipped. As invisible and minor as this software seems, it is a very big piece of the infrastructure of modern businesses.
In this chapter, we’ll look at techniques for creating this sort of software, looking at code examples extracted from real systems doing this sort of work every day. We’ll start by looking at email, discussing how to send, receive, and process it. Then we’ll take a look at some instant communication mediums, such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Jabber.