OK, this is kind of an involved question, so here goes:
I know that I could purchase proprietary email accounts or use Exchange Server/Netware,etc. But I don't want to.
I have the need to create a set of email accounts which are mapped to my domain and its subdomains:
userA@sub1.mydomain.com
userB@sub1.mydomain.com
userC@sub2.mydomain.com
userA@sub3.mydomain.com
(user names may potentially overlap across the subdomains - I can take steps to prevent this if it is deemed completely necessary, but I would like the luxury of having an admin@*.mydomain.com account for myself)
etc.
Now, I do NOT need the ability to access these emails in Outlook, or to connect to the email server via any methods at all. These email accounts are purpose-driven, and the only access allowed to them will be from a page embedded in an ASP.NET application. Because of this, I am free to simply save the emails as .msg files on the server. I don't have questions about any of that - I am quite fluid with parsing the emails.
My problem is, HOW do I "listen" for these emails? I have no problem with writing a standalone application to do this. I can even dedicate an entire machine to that purpose. Here is all I need to do:
1. "Listen" for the emails
- What components and methods do I need to employ to do the listening (preferably MS native non-3rd party) ?
- What do I need to do to configure the router?
- What do I need to do to configure IIS?
- Is the presence of subdomains going to introduce any difficulties?
2. Only accept emails from a list of valid email addresses
- Do I implement this filtering at the "listen level" or do I collect everything, and then weed through it?
- I need to accept wildcarded email addresses at certain domains. For example, I need to accept emails
from any account ending with "yahoo.com."
3. Ignore unsafe attachments
- I only want to accept .pdf attachments. I don't want to refuse the messages with other attachments,but I do
want to auto-send a notice of ignored attachment.
4. Save the email and log it
- No problem here. I have a database and parsing class ready to deploy for this purpose. Of course, I would
welcome any "been there, done that" suggestions about this aspect.
5. Send emails via my ISP's SMTP server
- Will there be issues when emails are sent from my "homemade" email accounts?
I fully appreciate any help or suggestions, including off-the-wall approaches. I am, however, closed to anything which involves employing a full e-mail server (such as Exchange) or requiring a non-Windows OS. Thank you very much!
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