Is JBoss Mail the right choice for me

[rudivankeirsbilck]

Hi all,

Currently, I am working on an smtp gateway for a J2EE application. The intent is that internal accounts (users) can send to and receive messages from smtp addresses.

I know how to deal with outbound email and was considering to write a resource adapter to hook into smtp or pop3 to receive mail.

Coding the resource adapter to listen on port 25 (smtp port) is not that hard to do but reading the raw bytes and converting them to objects is much harder and I would like to stay away from that if possible.

Coding the resource adapter to use javax.mail requires pop3 authentication and requires me to have a pop3 mail server.

I then came accross JBoss Mail which looks to me like a (pop3) mailserver but deployed as a J2EE application and that immediately appealed to me.

Now onto my questions:

1. Does JBoss Mail support forwarding emails that are sent to unknown addresses to one address.

2. If the above is not supported, I will need to create a JBoss Mail account for every internal account I have in the application so, is there an API to create accounts or is this only possible through the admin user interface?

3. Does JBoss Mail already handle attachments?

4. Would JBoss Mail allow me to set/get app specific tags in the smtp header?

5. What formatting does JBoss Mail support currently (plain text only or also rich text and/or html formatting).

6. Does JBoss Mail deploy on other app servers too? As it is a J2EE application, I suspect porting is not a problem and is merely a question of creating the appropriate deployment descriptors for the other app server.

Just to let you know, me and the company I work for are willing to contribute to the features that we require and are not completed yet.

[acoliver]

1. Does JBoss Mail support forwarding emails that are sent to unknown addresses to one address.

You can do this by creating a UserRepository instance that always returns true and a maillistener that sets the user. About 15 lines of code.

2. If the above is not supported, I will need to create a JBoss Mail account for every internal account I have in the application so, is there an API to create accounts or is this only possible through the admin user interface?

Presently we do not have an administration interface (you could just use an LDAP or DB server and use its associated API or SQL). This is planned. Also planned is such API.

3. Does JBoss Mail already handle attachments?

Presently it just saves the whole mail as a blob. Attachments are preserved. We will soon parse these, but do not yet.

4. Would JBoss Mail allow me to set/get app specific tags in the smtp header?

yes

5. What formatting does JBoss Mail support currently (plain text only or also rich text and/or html formatting).

It is a mail server. That is mail client dependent.

6. Does JBoss Mail deploy on other app servers too? As it is a J2EE application, I suspect porting is not a problem and is merely a question of creating the appropriate deployment descriptors for the other app server.

No. We are built on the JBoss microkernel.

[rudivankeirsbilck]

Me again,

Basically due to the fact that attachments were not supported at the time I asked, I decided in Dec 2005 not to go for JBoss Mail Server but use another open source mail server.

All is working fine except for one thing and that is why I am reconsidering JBoss Mail Server.

How about revisiting the most important of the initial questions and answering a new questions that relates to the problem I am having with the current open source mail server.

1. Does JBoss Mail already handle attachments?

2. Will JBoss allow me to access the complete bcc list (e.g. will a custom MailListener implementation class be able to read the complete bcc list)?

Many thanks,

Rudi.