CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshellemail
Lawrence Esguerra
Lawrence Esguerra

Reputation: 25

trigger a .sh script when a specific subject email is received

Anyway, I have a script that I want to run whenever I receive an email on gmail. And if possible a subject specific email. is such a thing possible and if so, what programs do I need to allow it.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3795

Answers (2)

Alex Howansky
Alex Howansky

Reputation: 53523

You can't instruct gmail to trigger an external script for you. I think you've got a few basic choices. In order of increasing difficulty and complexity:

1) Configure a gmail filter to deliver your desired messages to a special folder. Write a script to poll that folder, download (or delete or mark as read) messages it finds there, and then launch your local script. Set up a cron on your local machine to run the script every few minutes. You can poll the folder with IMAP or the GMAIL API. IMAP is probably easier. This will be tricky with shell, you're better of with Python, PHP, or similar.

2) Configure a gmail filter to forward your desired messages to an address on a mail server that you control. Use procmail or similar to intercept the incoming messages and launch your script.

3) Set up an account at Mailgun and configure the emails so they get delivered there directly. (Or forward from gmail as in #2.) Configure Mailgun to launch an API request when it receives messages. Build an API handler to receive the request. Launch your process from your API handler.

Upvotes: 2

jimm-cl
jimm-cl

Reputation: 5412

I have never done it, but I guess the first thing you should do is to take a look at the Google's Gmail API...

What is the Gmail API?

The Gmail API gives you flexible, RESTful access to the user's inbox, with a natural interface to Threads, Messages, Labels, Drafts, and History.

It seems to fit what you want - at least, without knowing the details of what you want to do.

The Gmail API can be used in a variety of different applications, including, typically:

  • Read-only mail extraction, indexing, and backup
  • Label management (add/remove labels)
  • Automated or programmatic message sending

You can use several programming languages - maybe the trick is using your programming language of choice to write a wrapper for the .sh script... I hope this helps!

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions