Mailman: An incoming email processing microframework in Ruby

http://blog.titanous.com/post/867488976/mailman-released

by Titanous • 16 years ago

39 37 16 years ago

blog.titanous.com

bad name... as there is a very established project already using the name.. http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html

veemjeem• 16 years ago

yeah, it will make googling the name nearly impossible...

blantonl2• 16 years ago

I would recommend "railmailer"

helium• 16 years ago

Why? This project has no dependencies on Rails.

JoachimSchipper2• 16 years ago

Yes. Sorry to say, but this was a huge red flag for me - if the author is apparently unaware of a project that it is that well-known, he has no business writing mail software. (I know that he comments on this very page that he is aware of GNU Mailman...)

spooneybarger2• 16 years ago

check the comments on his blog. he knew about it ahead of time and didnt think it was an issue because someone could just google 'ruby mailman'. apparently the idea of encroaching on another project's name never occurred to him as an extremely impolite ( to put it kindly ) thing to do.

technoweenie• 16 years ago

Astrotrain powers Lighthouse and Tender Support: http://github.com/technoweenie/astrotrain

Titanous10• 16 years ago

I think you'll find that Mailman is much more lightweight (it doesn't require a database and uses Mail, not TMail), and easier to use. Obviously you had very specific requirements when writing Astrotrain, but I'd love it if you'd try Mailman.

cdibona2• 16 years ago

I've tried mailman, over 10+ years ago.

davidu• 16 years ago

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mailman

Very popular...very well known.

crazydiamond• 16 years ago

Could you tell us what other similar projects/gems exist in ruby? How is this different or better than them ?

Are you handling gmail accounts, TLS authentication ? Is this 1.9 compliant ?

Titanous10• 16 years ago

Astrotrain is the only other ruby project I know of: http://github.com/technoweenie/astrotrain

Mailman is very lightweight, has Rails integration, and doesn't require a database to store routes (Astrotrain does). Instead, it uses a Sinatra-like DSL to define routes and conditions.

Gmail accounts can be handled using a MDA like getmail and the built-in maildir support in Mailman.

Mailman works fully with 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.9.1, 1.9.2, REE and JRuby.

koenigdavidmj• 16 years ago

Looks a lot like a light version of the Pythonic and much beastlier Lamson (http://www.lamsonproject.org/) created by Mr. Shaw.

Titanous10• 16 years ago

Yes, it was modeled after Lamson in some ways, but I didn't think that writing yet another mailserver was necessary, and I wanted Rails integration.

quadhome2• 16 years ago

Interesting. When I wrote my lamson-based daily journaling software, I also found the yet-another-mail-server aspect of Lamson redundant.

The syntax of mailman looks a bit nicer. Good unit tests.

Any example apps?

atomon2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure why everyone's focusing on the name, but this looks like a great project. I was just wishing that something like this existed yesterday, and poof, here it is. Great work! My only suggestion would be to support imap/gmail integration and the like without requiring an extra step such as getmail.

Titanous10• 16 years ago

Dealing with IMAP is tricky. In order to support it properly, and leave the messages on the server after processing, a list has to be stored on the client. I'd rather leave that to a mature MDA than implement it myself.

However, I will look into providing a easy configuration for Gmail.

atomon2• 16 years ago

Sounds great! I'd love to be able to register for a gmail account and then immediately be able to start processing incoming mail.

sigil2• 16 years ago

Wow. When choosing a name for a new project, isn't it standard practice to look for name collisions first -- google it, check freshmeat, apt-cache search, make search in freebsd ports, etc?

Titanous10• 16 years ago

I knew of GNU Mailman when I chose the name.

sigil2• 16 years ago

Hmm, then it's going to look like you're picking a fight (whether or not that's really the case). Get creative with the name, it's more fun anyway. Maybe some HNers can help you out.

donw2• 16 years ago

Very cool; mail handling is an area where Ruby needs work.

One question: Does it properly quote non-ASCII characters in mail headers? That's been a big pain point for me over the years, which I fixed by being lazy and using Javamail.

Good names for mail gems are hard to come by; my Javamail wrapper for JRuby ended up going through four different names because Mail, Mailer, Postman and Postal were all taken (we finally called the damn thing Postinius).

I'll at least offer my suggestion for a name; what about 'Takkyu'? Takkyubin is a very famous delivery service over here in Japan.

Titanous10• 16 years ago

It uses the Mail gem to do all the parsing, and I think that it handles non-ASCII just fine.

http://github.com/mikel/mail/

donw2• 16 years ago

Ah, RFC2822 is new in the past six months, then. If he's fixed the email address parsing bugs, then I have a lot less work to do now. :)

JoachimSchipper2• 16 years ago

I think the MTA->Maildir->Mailman route is odd; why not go MTA->Mailman directly, like, say, GNU Mailman, maildrop/procmail, or any other mail filter I've ever seen?

Titanous10• 16 years ago

You can use it as a local MDA/"mail filter" as well. Mailman accepts messages via Standard Input.

I don't recommend this, because you have to load and unload Ruby every time a message comes in. While this may be okay if you only have a few messages coming in, it will quickly become unbearable if you have any sort of volume. This will be even worse if you loading the Rails environment, as it can take several seconds or several tens of seconds, depending on the app size.

Side Note: There are at least three different projects using the name maildrop, and dealing with email, and I figured out which one you were talking about through context very easily.

Mailman: An incoming email processing microframework in Ruby

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