How to add on email monitoring and sending from Java web-server app

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How to add on email monitoring and sending from Java web-server app

Tools like BaseCamp, FogBugz & Jira have features where you can send an email to the server on a special address, and it will monitor this address and respond to mails received... e.g Jira let's you create a new bug-report by email, BaseCamp will append an email to a discussion thread, even figuring out the right thread based on the email contents.

If you had a Java web-app, how would you go about adding this functionality? A separate app which somehow polls a mailbox? A script which runs a Java app every few seconds?

What Java standard classes can be used here for the email parts? And is it mandatory that you already have a mail-server running so you can allocate an email account for the app, or do any of these apps provide their own lightweight email servers?

+1 A:

Apache Camel could be useful for something like this. It provides an email endpoint that could be used to poll the email account. From there, Camel provides a number of endpoints that could be used to act on the email just read. For example, you could place a message on a JMS queue, call an HTTP URL, or just call one of your own classes.

scompt.com 2010-06-04 08:16:22

@scompt.com Would this require a separate application, or can it be bundled into the main web-facing app somehow>

John 2010-06-04 10:02:35

Also on taking a brief look, it seems very 'enterprisey'... lots of abstraction and so on. Can it be used simply and quickly to throw something together, or is there a lot of setup involved with XML hell... and can it be used directly from a standard Java app not using Spring or other frameworks?

John 2010-06-04 10:05:03

You should be able to fire it up in your main app. All you need to do is create a `CamelContext`, add some routes, and `start()` it. They specifically say that it's made for such embedding.

scompt.com 2010-06-04 10:07:34

It's actually not too enterprisey. You can use it with all the Spring stuff, but also very easily without. There's an example at http://fusesource.com/docs/router/1.6/deploy_guide/FMRDS.ARBCC.html that starts it from a `main` method. Put that bit somewhere in your web app and you should be set.

scompt.com 2010-06-04 10:10:51

Looks very helpful, thankyou.

John 2010-06-05 18:52:41

ansaurus

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How to add on email monitoring and sending from Java web-server app

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