Reply to email to comment - php

Question

I want to setup my mail server in a way so that if someone sends email to user#example.com it'll be directed to user's inbox. This is not mail box. Rather its a chat platform. So communication should be real time. The workflow is,
Someone sends an email to user#example.com.
user gets a chat window with that message.
I can solve it by writing a program that polls the mail server each min and check for new messages. If found it just send a chat message. But that not real-time.
Another option could be adding some sort of plugin to the mail server that does the work. I haven't setup any mail server yet. I'll setup only that mail server that helps me to do this.
I am using Python, PHP. So any solution using those two language is welcomed. If all else fails I guess I have to write plugin in C.

Answer 1

Lamson could work, it's written in Python. It sits in front of your SMTP server and filters out the emails you define in it's routes file. The main rationale appears to be ease of developer use, and it's designed to be integrated into other software.
http://lamsonproject.org/

Answer 2

That's how you can do it:
1) Set up your DNS so that a MX record for the domain points to your server.
2) Configure a postfix virtual alias /etc/postfix/virtual:
#example.com django-mail-in
3) and /etc/aliases:
django-mail-in: "|/usr/local/bin/mta2django.py http://127.0.0.1:8000/mail-inbound"
4) The /usr/local/bin/mta2django.py is called by postscript and sends the mail to the mail-inbound django view. This mta2django.py should work:
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, urllib
import os
def post_message(url, recipient, message_txt):
""" post an email message to the given url
"""
if not url:
print "Invalid url."
print "usage: mta2django.py url <recipient>"
sys.exit(64)
data = {'mail': message_txt}
if recipient and len(recipient) > 0:
data ['recipient'] = recipient
try:
result = urllib.urlopen(url, urllib.urlencode(data)).read()
except (IOError,EOFError),e:
print "error: could not connect to server",e
sys.exit(73)
try:
exitcode, errormsg = result.split(':')
if exitcode != '0':
print 'Error %s: %s' % (exitcode, errormsg)
sys.exit(int(exitcode))
except ValueError:
print 'Unknown error.'
sys.exit(69)
sys.exit(0)
if __name__ == '__main__':
# This gets called by the MTA when a new message arrives.
# The mail message file gets passed in on the stdin
# Get the raw mail
message_txt = sys.stdin.read()
url = ''
if len(sys.argv)>1:
url = sys.argv[1]
recipient = ''
# If mta2django is executed as external command by the MTA, the
# environment variable ORIGINAL_RECIPIENT contains the entire
# recipient address, before any address rewriting or aliasing
recipient = os.environ.get('ORIGINAL_RECIPIENT')
if len(sys.argv)>2:
recipient = sys.argv[2]
post_message(url, recipient, message_txt)
5) Write a django view /mail-inbound which receives the mail and does the things you need it to do. In the request you have:
mail - the full email message
recipient - the original recipient (useful when you do not catch a specific email address but the whole domain / subdomain)
You can parse the email using the python email module:
import email
msg = email.message_from_string(request.get('mail'))
As I'm no postfix expert, I'm not sure if editing /etc/postfix/virtual and /etc/aliases is sufficient. Please consult the postfix documentation for details.