Upload photos by email (Posterous-like)

Question

Which are the first steps to integrate photo uploading by email into my application?

I am currently using Spring+Hibernate, and expose a bunch of services for a Flex client. What I want for my users to be able to do besides uploading through the client is uploading by email, just like Posterous, for instance does it.

Answer 1

Take a look at http://cloudmailin.com. CloudMailin will post the email to you as parameters of an HTTP POST so you don't have to worry about setting up the email server or anything like that. That way there's no integration to worry about you just receive the email using the external service. CloudMailin can also send the attachments directly to Amazon's S3 which might also help lighten the load on your server if you are receiving images via email.

Answer 2

You should start to think of how do you want to revice the emails.

• Use a standalon Mail Server and your Server (Spring+Hibernate) acts like a mail client for this Mail Server
• Implement your own Mail Server as part of your existing Application (integrated).

I recommend the 1 way (using a external standard mail server and act as a client).