Getting incoming mail

In your code

Mailbox instances have a method named get_new_mail; this method will gather new messages from the server.

Using the Django Admin

From the ‘Mailboxes’ page in the Django Admin, check the box next to each of the mailboxes you’d like to fetch e-mail from, select ‘Get new mail’ from the action selector at the top of the list of mailboxes, then click ‘Go’.

Using a cron job

You can easily consume incoming mail by running the management command named getmail (optionally with an argument of the name of the mailbox you’d like to get the mail for).:

python manage.py getmail

Receiving mail directly from Exim4 or Postfix via a pipe

Django Mailbox’s processincomingmessage management command accepts, via stdin, incoming messages. You can configure Postfix or Exim4 to pipe incoming mail to this management command to import messages directly without polling.

You need not configure mailbox settings when piping-in messages, mailbox entries will be automatically created matching the e-mail address to which incoming messages are sent, but if you would like to specify the mailbox name, you may provide a single argument to the processincmingmessage command specifying the name of the mailbox you would like it to use (and, if necessary, create).

Receiving Mail from Exim4

To configure Exim4 to receive incoming mail, start by adding a new router configuration to your Exim4 configuration like:

django_mailbox:
  debug_print = 'R: django_mailbox for $localpart@$domain'
  driver = accept
  transport = send_to_django_mailbox
  domains = mydomain.com
  local_parts = emailusernameone : emailusernametwo

Make sure that the e-mail addresses you would like handled by Django Mailbox are not handled by another router; you may need to disable some existing routers.

Change the contents of local_parts to match a colon-delimited list of usernames for which you would like to receive mail. For example, if one of the e-mail addresses targeted at this machine is jane@example.com, the contents of local_parts would be, simply jane.

Note

If you would like messages addressed to any account @mydomain.com to be delivered to django_mailbox, simply omit the above local_parts setting. In the same vein, if you would like messages addressed to any domain or any local domains, you can omit the domains setting or set it to +local_domains respectively.

Next, a new transport configuration to your Exim4 configuration:

send_to_django_mailbox:
  driver = pipe
  command = /path/to/your/environments/python /path/to/your/projects/manage.py processincomingmessage
  user = www-data
  group = www-data
  return_path_add
  delivery_date_add

Like your router configuration, transport configuration should be altered to match your environment. First, modify the command setting such that it points at the proper python executable (if you’re using a virtual environment, you’ll want to direct that at the python executable in your virtual environment) and project manage.py script. Additionally, you’ll need to set user and group such that they match a reasonable user and group (on Ubuntu, www-data suffices for both).

Receiving mail from Postfix

Although I have not personally tried using Postfix for this, Postfix is capable of delivering new mail to a script using pipe. Please consult the Postfix documentation for pipe here. You may want to consult the above Exim4 configuration for tips.