Seam mailer component

[pmuir]

I created a manager component for Apache Commons email; I've included an example to show how to use it.

* http://bigbob.splendid.co.uk/mailer.zip - Mailer component

* http://jroller.com/page/pmuir?entry=mailer_component_for_seam - Blog Entry

[theute]

Could you add a Wiki page with that ?

[pmuir]

I added a link on the Wiki to the blog entry under a new heading - Components. Would you prefer a copy of the entry?

I've also added a JasperReports component that compiles (at the time Seam starts) reports designs defined in components.xml and makes them available for injection.

[theute]

This is great like this. thanks for sharing your components !

[gavin.king]

Nice. It might be worth including this in Seam.

Can commons-email also be used for processing incoming emails? If so, could get something decent be combining this with JCA message inflow mapped to a message-driven bean.

[norman.richards]

Do we have a component registry? It might be interesting to start collecting some of these to give seam developers more tools to choose from.

[pmuir]

No it can only send email.

When I wrote this I started off with the JavaMail API (which jboss has an impl of) which CAN be used to receive email but changed to commons email (which is build on JavaMail API) as it presented an easier to use interface. And I have no need to receive emails ;)

I might have another look at how much worse it would be to use the javamail api rather than commons.

[gavin.king]

The whole area of processing email is an important one that I wanted to get sorted out, but it just keeps getting pushed and pushed...

[rpiaggio]

I think it is great to have a component for email manipulation, but IMHO this concern is orthogonal to that of a web framework. Including something like this in the Seam standard would add unnecesary complexity to the framework and its documentation. Again, IM(Very)HO, I see a place for a repository of optional additional components for specific concerns.

[nepoez79]

this is an awesome little plug-in. Saved me much time.

Thanks!

[pmuir]

Ok, so I do perhaps need to receive email ;-) and faxes, and SMS, and...

• 
  
• I started looking at MDB and JCA message inflow, looks like a good way to do it. My initial idea would be to have a listener interface
  
  

  public interface EmailListener {
  public void receive(javax.mail.Message message);
  }

  
  
  which must be implemeneted by the MDB receiving email. Then write a resource adaptor to receive new messages from the emailbox and deliver them.
  
  
• The resource adaptor would need to poll the mail box every x seconds to check for new email.
  
  
• Might want to set user, host, password at runtime. But what I'm suggesting seems to require it at deploy time.
  
  
• Doesn't seem to be very Seam like. A thought is to tie it to component driven events which could solve other problems (I need to think about this)
  
  
• Would be a good way to send email as well i.e.
  
  

  @In private Mailer mailer
  ...
  javax.mail.Message message = ...;
  mailer.send(message);
  ...
  

  
  
  The Mailer component could then add in any defaults specified if not set on the message.
  
  Comments, thoughts, ideas welcome (please!)

[cptnkirk]

* Might want to set user, host, password at runtime. But what I'm suggesting seems to require it at deploy time.

How about including an annotation for injecting your mail component that could either take config information statically or via EL? Is EL runtime configurable enough for everyone? It would be nice if Seam supported JMX remoting of components. I have a feeling it's someone already supports this, maybe JEE 5 provides an annotation or maybe this is a Spring thing (sometimes it's hard to keep these frameworks straight).

[supernovasoftware.com]

I would be fantastic to have a Seam Cookbook that contained real world examples and solutions using the Seam Framework.

I would like to see something more detailed a focued than the current examples.

The current documentation is good, but I would like to see some recipes.

[pmuir]

I've updated this to use JavaMail for outbound, and to support inbound email via JCA and message driven beans.

http://jroller.com/page/pmuir?entry=email_transport_layer_revisted

[gavin.king]

Pete, is all this linked from the Seam wiki?