How do I set up an inbound mail controller so users can post to unique email address?

Question

Tumblr (the short form blogging platform) has a feature where you are given a unique email address (for example, [email protected]) that you can email text or images and it automatically formats it into a post for you (as long as the sending email address matches your account email address).

I'd let to set up something similar, but solely as a method to submit images. Ideally, when a user signs up to my site, I'd create a unique address for them and store it in my db (MySQL). If a user emails a photo to that address using the email address they signed up with, i'd route it to a PHP function that breaks it down and handles the upload of content to their account.

How would I go about setting something like this up? Would it be something at the DNS level, or Apache level? Would I need to create a "safe list" of all the "real" email accounts on my domain to pass it through first? Also, I'm using Google Apps for email on this domain, will I need to create some sort of filter on that end?

Any ideas/suggestions would be awesome!

Answer 1

It would be at the MTA level. Most MTAs have a facility whereby an email can be piped to an external program; this program would then parse the email and store the image.

Answer 2

There's another quick and dirty way to make this work...

Setup a "catch-all" address for your domain. In other words, setup your domain so that e-mail sent to any address at the domain automatically gets forward to one catch-all address (i.e. [email protected]).

Then, on the PHP side... Setup a script that periodically checks the e-mail in the [email protected] box. Be sure to check the "To:" field so that you can identify which specific user the message was intended for.

Hope this helps!