Commands can be fed to csoftadm program using the the -c or - option. The following command dumps the list of e-mail addresses to a file:

  $ csoftadm -c "mail alias list" > aliases.txt

The - option reads commands from the standard input:

  $ echo "mail alias list" | csoftadm - > aliases.txt

A perl script may call the csoftadm program in the following ways:

  open(CSOFTADM, '|csoftadm -') || die;
  print CSOFTADM qq{mail alias add "user@domain.ext" "insn"};
  close(CSOFTADM);

However, the MGID module provides a better interface (this is a Perl XS module with bindings to the libmgid library). The module is documented in the MGID(3p) manual page. The following script authenticates and outputs the server announcements using the low-level query interface:

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  
  use MGID;
  my $mgi = MGID->new('localhost', 73, $USERNAME, $PASSWORD)
      || die MGID::Error();
  
  if ($mgi->ModuleAvail('Info')) {
	print $mgi->QueryList('Info', 'Motd'), "\n";
  }

The following script uses the high-level interface to mail configuration (see MGID::MailDeliveryCfg):

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  
  use MGID;
  my $mgi = MGID->new('localhost', 73, $USERNAME, $PASSWORD)
      || die MGID::Error();
  
  unless ($mgi->ModuleAvail('Alias')) {
	die MGID::Error();
  }
  
  # Print addresses
  my $mailCfg = $mgi->MailDeliveryCfg();
  foreach my $addr ($mailCfg->Addresses()) {
	print $addr->AddressUTF8()."\n";
	foreach my $insn ($addr->Insns()) {
		foreach my $cond ($insn->Conds()) {
			print "(if )".$cond->String()."\n";
		}
		print $insn->String()."\n";
	}
  }
  
  # Configure new address
  my $addr = MGID::MailAddress->new('test-addr@domain.ext');
  $addr->Add(MGID::MailInsn->newForward('dest1@domain.ext'));
  $addr->Add(MGID::MailInsn->newForward('dest2@domain.ext'));
  $addr->Commit($mgi) || die MGID::Error();

The C/C++ client library libmgid provides the most efficient interface for issuing CsoftMGI queries. Programs using this library will establish a connection and speak directly with the server. C/C++ programs may be compiled with `mgid-config --cflags` and linked against `mgid-config --libs`. The API is documented in mgid.

The "dns edit" command may be used to update the address associated with a domain or subdomain. By calling csoftadm remotely, one can perform a DNS update every time a dynamic IP address is allocated to a router (e.g., by DHCP).

Before executing the script below, make sure that you have public key auth with ssh functioning (see the ssh howto). This script is best invoked from a dhclient script (typically /etc/dhclient-script depending on your dhclient installation), but it can also be invoked periodically (say every 4 hours) from a cron job.

 
 #!/bin/sh
 
 # This is a script for DynDNS. It finds a new IP, connects to the
 # server then the DNS commands in csoftadm are run, updating the A
 # record for a domain or sub-domain.
 
 # Uncomment the following for dsl on OpenBSD: 
 # NEW_IP=$(ifconfig pppoe0 | awk '/inet/ { print $2 }');
 
 # Uncomment the following for dsl on FreeBSD:
 # NEW_IP=$(ifconfig tun0 | awk '/inet/ { print $2 }');
 
 # Uncomment the following for dsl on Linux:
 # NEW_IP=$(ifconfig ppp0 | awk '/inet addr:/ { print $2 }' | cut -d":" -f2);
 
 # Uncomment the four commands below if you have no external interface 
 # on your computer; this is, if you are on a LAN. Install wget first. 
 # wget -nv http://bot.whatismyipaddress.com/ -O $HOME/.whatismyip
 # echo ' ' 
 # sleep 5 
 # NEW_IP=$(cat $HOME/.whatismyip);
 
 if [ ! -r $HOME/.old_IP ]; then
 	echo '1.2.3.4' > $HOME/.old_IP
 else
 	echo ' An old_IP was found.'
 	echo ' '
 fi 
 
 OLD_IP=$(cat $HOME/.old_IP);
 
 if [ $NEW_IP = $OLD_IP ]; then
  	echo ' Ugg! Same IP! Bailing out fast.'
	echo ' '	
	exit 1		
 fi
 
 # Below, replace "your_username@your_server.csoft.net" with the correct
 # entry and "home.domain.ext" with the domain pointing to your home
 # computer, which you want to resolve to its new IP.
 
 if [ $NEW_IP != $OLD_IP ]; then
 	echo ' Ah, a new IP was found. Here we go. The new IP is:' $NEW_IP
	echo ' '
	ssh your_username@your_server.csoft.net \
	    csoftadm -c "'dns edit home.domain.ext $NEW_IP'"
 fi

 if [ $? != 0 ]; then
	echo ' Failed!'
	echo ' '
	exit 1
else
        echo ' The DNS was successfully updated!'
        echo ' '
 fi
 
 if [ -r $HOME/.old_IP ]; then
	echo $NEW_IP > $HOME/.old_IP
 fi