Question

I would like to process incoming e-mails (on IMAP account) as a e-mail fetching client and feed e-mail data into a scripting language to fill up a specific tables in database. The main goal is to process e-mail body text for data mining and metrics.

Best if run on common UNIX like systems: Linux, *BSD, Solaris

Infrastructure:

Mail Server <---using-IMAP--client<--- My Server--> Scripting lang. -> Database

What I found so far:

• MTA / fetchmail & procmail
• getmail (python script)
• using plain e-mail client to grab emails to ~/.Mailbox and process them (expecting poor performance)

Any suggestions of what may be used to perform such task?

Answer 1

For Python, imaplib implements an IMAP4 client.

This and Nelson’s answer should give you the template to follow:

1. Choose a scripting language that you want to use on your server.
2. Does it have an IMAP client library, extension, or built in functionality?
3. Does it have a connector to the specific database you want to use (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL etc.)?
4. If answers to (2) or (3) are “No”, go back to step 1.
5. …
6. Profit!