How to implement the "reply to this email" function for my web application?

Question

I have an application that sends emails when a user creates / modifies an entry. I would like my users to be able to reply to the email they send and the web application will receive the email, analyze it and automatically update the record. I saw this in web apps like Basecamp. The letter usually says “The answer is above this line,” and if you simply reply to the letter, you do not need to log in to the web application to update your ticket / conversation.

How can I implement such functionality? (I'm not looking for a specific implementation of the language, but rather an agnostic solution to the language).

Answer 1

There are two ways to do this:

• You can use the Procmail filter to connect the incoming message to your script. This will require some know-how to set up, but it is certainly possible to do what you described using this method.

• Use a service such as MailGun - they do all the hard work of setting up and configuring the mail server material and exposing it to you through a good programmable web API. I rate it this week to solve a similar problem similar to the one you have, and I can tell you: it is really great, and I highly recommend that you check it yourself.

Answer 2

You will need to implement a service / daemon that will poll the email inbox for new messages. To associate an incoming e-mail with the corresponding data, you can include the identifier in the subject of the outgoing message.

Answer 3

I agree that you should create a system for receiving incoming letters, but I do not always agree that the survey is the right decision. Take a look at the blog post I wrote on this topic here . This applies to Rails, but concepts should work in any language. That's why we wrote CloudMailin to provide the best way to receive email.

You can also use a unique address for each letter, which will not allow the user to change the topic of the subject, which is a problem. The disposable part of the email address is useful for this. [e-mail] for example.