Docs

[yok0]

Any plans on updating docs or is this project being archived? I am having hard time figuring out how to use Mailroom. Also some of the functions in the existing examples arseems to be no longer there, like IMAP.retrive and IMAP.delete.

Thanks

[andrewtimberlake]

Hi @yok0 The project currently does all I need it to do and is running in production to manage incoming mail via IMAP. The primary focus of Mailroom is a router-like interface for incoming mail. The IMAP and POP3 modules provide functionality for those respective protocols but the power is in the Inbox module which works like this:

defmodule Namespace.Mailroom do
  use Mailroom.Inbox

  match do
    to("email@example.com")
    # recipient(~r/^.+@mydomain\.com$/i)
    subject(~r/a subject/)
    has_attachment?

    fetch_mail #Previous matching is done on headers and IMAP envelope, if the match succeeds and you need the body, then this will retrieve the message body
    process(SomeModule, :some_function)
  end

  match do
    to("wrong@example.com")

    ignore
  end

  def config([app, key]) do
    Keyword.merge(
      [debug: false, folder: :inbox, assigns: %{}],
      Application.get_env(app, key, [])
    )
  end
end

defmodule SomeModule do
  def some_function(%MessageContext{}) do
    #...
  end
end

To answer your issue about the missing examples, IMAP doesn’t have retrieve or delete but POP3 does I’m happy to answer questions or accept documentation pull requests.

[gernotkogler]

Hi @andrewtimberlake

Wow, this example helped a lot! Would be great if you could show some code that extracts attachments from an Email

[andrewtimberlake]

Hi @gernotkogler The module that is invoked through process(SomeModule, :some_function) will receive a %MessageContext{mail_info: mail_info, message: message} message is a message struct from the elixir email library You can use that to retrieve attachments:

message
|> Mail.get_attachments()
|> Enum.each(fn {filename, contents} ->
  # ... do something with the attachment
end)

PS. If you want to make your life much easier, I have launched a service, Mailcast that processes emails and sends them to you via webhook. Let me know if you’d like a demo

[gernotkogler]

Hi @andrewtimberlake

Thanks for the quick response. I figured out that I could use Mail to get to the attachments in the meantime, but your code snippet is a bit more concise.

I was reasoning about Mailroom.IMAP.BodyStructure since that module has a get_attachments(body_structure, acc \\ []) but didn't figure out how to use it (hint: zero docs).

I guess some work on the docs would attract way more people. If I hadn't found your snippet in the Docs issue today, I would have given up on mailroom. Now I have a perfect solution for my needs with just about 50 lines of code, great, thanks for your nice work!

Using a third party service is not an option for me since the emails I process are confidential. And, by the way, the site seems to have issues, it renders a big SORRY.

Let me know if you would accept a PR that documents the inbox usage in the README.

[andrewtimberlake]

Wrong link 🤦‍♂️ I’ve updated it. I understand about the emails. Feel free to submit a PR. Thanks

[gernotkogler]

Looks good, cool idea. I actually wondered if I could use a service that calls a webhook when emails arrive, but as I said, my emails are confidential.

May I ask you one more question? When I receive emails from an iPhone that just contain an image, the image is rendered inline. Mail.get_attachments() seems not to handle inline attachments. Did you run into that problem, too?

[andrewtimberlake]

I’ve sent you an email to take discussion of confidentiality offline.

I have seen that. Hey.com seems to do the same thing. I saw the comment on elixir-mail. I’ll have a look further there.