Monitor mailbox with POP/ASP.NET

[hardieca]

I would like to build a web application that will monitor a mailbox
for new emails and then send a response. I have a reseller package
with my hosting company, but they don't want to give me direct access
to the mail server's API for security reasons.

Can I instead somehow occasionally query my mailbox with POP? They
won't deploy a standard app on their server because its shared amongst
many resellers, is there a way I can do this with ASP.NET?

Regards,

Chris

 

[Tim Mackey]

hi chris,
there are many pop3 components written in .net. they will generally consist
of a dll that you can reference in your asp.net application and use the API
provided by the component to check mail.
http://www.google.com/search?q=C#+POP3+component
i haven't used any in recent years but there are free ones that will do the
job nicely.

one question. asp.net doesn't sound like the most natural platform for a
monitoring application. asp.net runs on IIS which is request/response
platform. you will need some way to trigger your monitor, e.g.
application_start in global.asax, and then launch a thread or something with
a timer on it. sounds far from ideal though if you want consistent/reliable
monitoring without any request directly from the user. my choice would be
to develop a windows service and install it wherever you can, to check mail
periodically.

if it's just an autoresponder you need, it sounds like your host has a very
poor mail server control panel. i've never seen a hosting company that
didn't provide a web-configurable auto-responder with their mail servers.
if you aren't super-loyal to them, it may be easier to switch host than
spend a few days writing an auto-responder app just to fill the gap they
should be providing anyway.

good luck
tim

 

[hardieca]

I'm actually trying to create a web application that will calculate
distances between submitted addresses via email using MapQuests
geocoding API. The idea is to use a cell phone to determine the
distance to a point of interest by emailing my server and then getting
a response back.

Using ASP.Net is not the most ideal set-up, but I can't afford the
cost of getting my own server where I could create my own Windows
service...

Regards,

Chris

 

[Tim Mackey]

gotcha. sounds like a great app.
can you get a static IP address off your ISP and use a windows XP/Vista box
as a server? sounds like it wouldn't be a massively demanding site in terms
of bandwidth, if it's a text-based request/response.

if i were in your shoes, i would build a mobile/WAP web app with asp.net,
rather than sending emails through the phone and waiting for the web site to
poll the mailbox, trying to parse out the email body into a postal address
etc. i've done WAP apps before and it's a great delivery platform for
simple apps on cell-phones. the big benefit here is you get an instant
response. although WAP obviously has its limitations in terms of user
interface, the same applies to an email client on a cell-phone. i can't
think of many phones these days that don't have at least WAP support (in
europe anyway). most higher-spec phones will do a pretty good job at
rendering a normal web page anyway, so if the forms are simply designed, you
might get away with a normal asp.net app.

another option, which i have no experience with, would be to build a java
(J2ME?) app since any decent mobile nowadays can install a java application,
such as the Gmail mobile client.

hope this helps
tim