How to make appscale support inbound service mail

AppScale is a platform that allows you to deploy and manage applications on various cloud providers, including Google App Engine, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. To make AppScale support inbound service mail, you'll need to configure your AppScale environment to use a mail server and set up a mail handler to process incoming emails. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you achieve this:

Prerequisites:

  1. AppScale installed and configured on your preferred cloud provider.
  2. A mail server set up and configured (e.g., Gmail, Sendgrid, or a self-hosted mail server).
  3. A domain name registered and pointing to your AppScale environment.

Step 1: Configure your mail server

  1. Set up your mail server to allow incoming emails. This will depend on your mail server provider or configuration.
  2. Create a mail account or alias on your mail server that will receive incoming emails.

Step 2: Configure AppScale to use your mail server

  1. In your AppScale environment, navigate to the "Settings" page and click on "Mail" under the "Advanced" section.
  2. Enter the mail server settings:
    • Mail Server: Enter the hostname or IP address of your mail server.
    • Mail Port: Enter the port number used by your mail server (e.g., 587 for Gmail).
    • Mail Username: Enter the username or alias you created on your mail server.
    • Mail Password: Enter the password for the mail account or alias.
  3. Click "Save" to save your mail server settings.

Step 3: Set up a mail handler in AppScale

  1. In your AppScale environment, navigate to the "Settings" page and click on "Mail Handlers" under the "Advanced" section.
  2. Click "Add Mail Handler" and enter the following information:
    • Handler Type: Select "Inbound Mail" as the handler type.
    • Mailbox: Enter the mail account or alias you created on your mail server.
    • Script: Enter a Python script that will handle incoming emails. This script will be executed whenever an email is received.
  3. Click "Save" to save your mail handler settings.

Step 4: Configure your AppScale application to receive emails

  1. In your AppScale application, create a Python script that will handle incoming emails. This script should be executed whenever an email is received.
  2. In your script, use the appscale.mail module to access the incoming email message.
  3. Process the email message as needed (e.g., extract attachments, parse the message body, etc.).

Example Python script:

import appscale.mail

def handle_inbound_email(message):
    # Process the email message
    print("Received email:", message.subject)
    print("From:", message.from_addr)
    print("Body:", message.body)

appscale.mail.set_handler(handle_inbound_email)

Step 5: Test your inbound email setup

  1. Send an email to the mail account or alias you created on your mail server.
  2. Verify that the email is received by your AppScale environment by checking the AppScale logs or the Python script you created to handle incoming emails.

By following these steps, you should now have AppScale set up to support inbound service mail.