"Catch" mails using Rails (some sort of ticket software)?

Rails
1

Hi all

I’m developing a website where DJ’s can be booked. To book a DJ, the
user can fill out a booking request form, which is saved as a Booking
model instance.

Now I’d like to save all correspondence (which is done through email) in
the database, so I can later browse my old bookings and can exactly see
what I’ve written to the requester and what he has written back.

So I wonder how I can “catch” mails using Rails?

The idea is the following:

  1. The user ([email protected]) creates a booking request.
  2. The request is saved as a Booking instance
  3. A mail with the booking details is sent to my email
    ([email protected]) with a unique subject (e.g. Booking request #123);
    the sender of the email is [email protected]
  4. I can reply to the email, which is catched by Rails. Rails evaluates
    the subject (e.g. Re: Booking request #123), saves the content of the
    mail into the database and forwards the mail to the user
    ([email protected])
  5. The user replies the same way…

Now, is this very hard to implement? Where can I find extensive
informations about this topic?

Thanks a lot for help,
Josh

2

Nobody can point me into the right direction…?

3

One approach might be to use an open source MDA that uses mysql as a
message
store, setup DRb to poll every 5 minutes… The benefit of this
approach is
that you get all the spam filtering, etc. from the MDA; wouldn’t want to
reinvent those wheels. Polling is a drag, so if the MDA has a
notification
system, that would be better, and if it were ReSTful, integration w/ RoR
would be a breeze.

Zimbra’s a pretty good one with open source option and mysql store, and
since it’s open source, they either have good api’s for things like
notification or you can add it yourself.

Hope this helps,

m

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Joshua M. <