How to implement a "reply to this email" feature for my web application?

Question

I have an application that sends emails when a user creates/modifies a record. I would like my users to be able to reply to the email that was sent to them and have the web application receive the email, parse it and update the record automatically. I have seen this done in web apps like Basecamp. The email usually says "Reply above this line", and if you simply reply to the email, you don't have to log in to the web application in order to update your ticket/conversation.

How can I go about implementing this sort of functionaly? (I'm not looking for a particular language implementation, but rather a language agnostic solution).

Answer 1

There are 2 ways you can do this:

1. You could use a Procmail filter to pipe the incoming email to your script. This would need some 'nix knowhow to setup - but it's certainly possible to do what you described via this method.

2. Use a service like MailGun - they do all the hard work of setting up and configuring the mail server stuff and expose it to you via a nice programmable web API. I've been evaluating it this week to solve a similar problem like the one you are having and I can tell you: it is really cool and I highly recommend you check it out yourself.