email-feed is a script that scans email and creates an RSS feed for unread messages. It only shares titles, it doesn't reveal message contents. It should be run as a cronjob.

1. Rename email_feed.cfg.sample to email_feed.cfg
2. Customize the variables in email_feed.cfg (More on this below.)
3. Set up a cronjob that runs email_feed every day.
4. Set up something to maintain the size of its log file.

It scans an email account and creates an RSS feed for unread messages. This is useful for any email accounts that you rarely check if you use a feed reader.

For each unread email, it'll create a feed item like so:

<item>
  <title>
    [CoinBase] Bitcoin transaction complete.
  </title>
  <pubDate>Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:23:52 +0000 (UTC)</pubDate>
  <link>https://webmail.yourdomain.com/</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">7aa13ff7fc1542e3c609aa41fbbc6bc61cb1f4e4</guid>
  <description>
    "[CoinBase] Bitcoin transaction complete." sent on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:23
  </description>
</item>

The logfile it writes looks something like this:

2012-10-08 13:00  1s OK (Wrote 1 new item.)
2012-10-09 13:00  0s OK
2012-10-10 13:00  1s OK (Wrote 3 new items.)
2012-10-11 13:00  0s OK

The RSS feed it writes validates at the feed validation service.

email_feed.cfg looks like this:

[main]
name = John Doe
url_base = yourdomain.com
logfile = logfile.log
rss_base = email_feed
[imap]
mailbox = mail.yourdomain.com
webmail = https://%(mailbox)s
user = [email protected]
password = mooltipass

This section refers to stuff like the name and location of the new RSS file.

name: The name of the person to whom the email feed belongs.
url_base: The base of the URL that the RSS feed is at.
logfile: The name of the logfile.
rss_base: The base filename of the RSS file. '.xml' will be appended to the end.

Given the example above, the complete URL for the feed would be http://yourdomain.com/email_feed.xml.

This section refers to the mailbox that the script will read to create the feed.

mailbox: The IMAP address of the email server.
webmail: The address of the server's web interface.
user: The email address of the account to watch.
password: The IMAP password.

To restrict the size of your logfile, you should use the mechanism provided by your operating system. But if you want to roll your own, putting something like the following in a cronjob will work, too.

find log/ -maxdepth 1 -name \*\.log -type f ! -executable -print0 | \
xargs -0 -I{} sh -c 'MAX=200; if [ $(wc -l < "{}") -gt $MAX ]; then \
TMPF=$(mktemp) && tail -$MAX "{}" > $TMPF && chmod --reference="{}" $TMPF && mv $TMPF "{}"; fi'

Yes.

Run the command with the --verbose flag for verbose logging.

This software uses the MIT License.