Configuring the application

The application reads its configuration information from the following text files. 

• allow.from
  • The ``whitelist''. Use this file to specify email addresses or domains that you will not try to look for spam in.
• allow.subject
  • Lets you specify phrases that, if found in the Subject field of a message, will let that message pass through the anti-spam engine.
• allow.contents
  • If a regular expression you specify in this file is found in the body of a message, the message will pass through the anti-spam engine.
• reject.from
  • The ``blacklist''. Use this file to specify the addresses of known spammers. Messages from these addresses will be rejected without deeper examination.
• reject.subject
  • Use this file to specify regular expressions corresponding to phrases in the Subject field that you want to reject.
• reject.contents
  • Use this file to specify regular expressions corresponding to phrases in a message body or attachment that you want to reject.
• notify.from
  • The application will send a message to my pager (through an Internet service my pager company provides) if the From field of a new email message matches a name I provide in this file.

These are simple text files, where each line in the file represents one record. For instance, the notify.from file will have entries like this:

alsmom@devdaily.com
alswife@devdaily.com

I created this in a simple text format like this for two main reasons. First, because I'm almost always traveling, this was the easiest format for me to work with. Second, I thought this would be the easiest format to explain to a user base, and other things like property files and XML were not warranted.