imap-to-discord

Forward mails in an IMAP mailbox or Microsoft Azure to a discord webhook.

Configuration

imap-to-discord is configured using JSONC files. You can either use a single appsettings.jsonc file or a directory called appsettings with multiple .jsonc files in them. If multiple files are used their keys are deep merged, with filenames later in the alphabet having priority. All examples below will use the directory format, placing each step in its own file.

Adding your server

First you need to configure server(s) (called "Source" in imap-to-discord) to receive mails (called "Message") from. Everything, regardless of if it is a source or messages is a "Thing".

// appsettings/01-sources.jsonc
// Configures two servers, one IMAP and one Microsoft Azure
{
  "Sources": {
    // IMAP
    "your-imap-server-1": {
      // Note the different casing under the "Server" key!
      "Type": "IMAP",
      "Server": {
        "host": "imap.example.com",
        "port": 993,
        "secure": true,
        "auth": {
          "user": "jane.doe@example.com",
          "pass": "8SA@5KndQbU6ib%YQcgh&J2dj&K^P!"
        }
      }
    },
    // Microsoft Azure
    "your-azure-server-1": {
      // Requires you to configure an "App registration" with ONLY the Permission "Mail.Read"
      // Remove any other default permissions, especially permissions of type "Delegated".
      "Type": "Graph",
      "TenantId": "b29465d7-9a33-43e6-bc8a-389d60886826",
      "ClientId": "8a257d34-78dc-48a1-b6cf-1a3e99c0bbb9",
      "ClientSecret": "meG^oDPT$obPLg*&tpVqmLMqCD27@$oRkvSozNn@@u@zmd$B",
      "UserId": "jane.doe@example.com" // Or ID of the user / shared mailbox you want to receive mails from
    }
  }
}

You can have as many sources of as many types as you want with any desired unique name.

Every IMAP source supports the following configuration options:

• Server - Settings for the IMAP server. See the options on this page for documentation. (Required)
• Flag - The message flag to add to a message once processed. (Default: "\\Seen" - marks the message as read. Most IMAP servers support arbitrary values here.)
• Mailbox - The mailbox to search for messages in. (Default: "INBOX")
• CacheLocation - Allows to change the location of the cache stored by this source (or set to null to disable caching)? (Default: "./cache" - Can also be globally configured at root level for all sources)

Every Graph source supports the following configuration options:

• TenantId - The directory/tenant ID of your app registration. (Required)
• ClientId - The application/client ID of your app registration. (Required)
• ClientSecret - A secret stored under "Certificates & secrets". Keep in mind that secrets always have an expiry date and need to be rotated, which is outside of the scope of this software. (Required)
• UserId - The e-mail address or ID of the (shared) mailbox to search for messages in. (Required)
• Scopes - The scopes of the application (Default: ["https://graph.microsoft.com/.default"] - uses the scopes defined in the enterprise application).
• Mailbox - The folder of the mailbox to search for messages in (Default: "Inbox")
• PollingInterval - As opposed to IMAP imap-to-discord polls Azure for new mails. This is the interval in MS. API requests to the Graph API for mails are free. (Default: 30000 - 30 seconds)
• MailDeduplication - Since IDs of mails can change at any time in Azure there are two different strategies available to detect if a mail was already forwarded: Id and Date. The Id strategy uses the ephemeral ID while Date uses a naïve approach to simply check the receive date of the mail. (Default: "Date")
• CacheLocation - Allows to change the location of the cache stored by this source (or set to null to disable caching)? (Default: "./cache" - Can also be globally configured at root level for all sources)

Forwarding the mails to discord

Now that we receive the mails from a source we need to forward them to discord.

// appsettings/02-basic-forward.jsonc
// Forwards mails to discord.
{
  "Forward": {
    "your-forward-1": {
      "Webhook": "https://discord.com/api/webhooks/45646468789789701/UikfdfScOv-0pAsdfgsfae34rt_asdgbniFEas232hrebz54v3425_dsDsf"
    }
  }
}

This is the most basic forward settings available and will simply forward all mails received from any mail server to Discord using a very simple formatter.

Every forward supports the following options:

• Webhook - The webhook URL to send the message to. (Required)
• Source - A detector to limit which sources are forwarded. (Default: "All")
• Message - A detector to limit which messages will be forwarded. (Default: "All")
• Formatter - The formatter to format the mails for discord. (Default: "Default")
• Exclusive - Abort the handling of this mail after this formatter, blocking others from also forwarding it? (Default: true)

Some cases will however require more advanced handling for mails than the bare bones configuration above. In this case we can use the Source, Message and Formatter config options of the forward to configure it further.

Limiting the source

The Source configuration allows us to limit which source will even be considered by this forward using a detector.

// appsettings/03-sources-detector.jsonc
// Checks if the mail was sent from the imap.example.com IMAP server.
{
  "Forward": {
    "your-forward-1": {
      "Source": {
        "Type": "Named",
        "Name": "your-imap-server-1"
      }
    }
  }
}

This file is merged with the configuration of appsettings/02-basic-forward.jsonc (created here), but we also could have placed it in the same file.

This detector limits that the forward your-forward-1 will only forward mails to the webhook that have been received via the IMAP server your-imap-server-1, but ignore the Microsoft Azure server which we created in the first step. This can be useful when you have many servers configured.

The following detector types are available:

• All - The default detector, allows everything.
• Named - Only allows things with a certain name. (Hint: A shorthand for using a case-insensitive named detector is to directly use the name instead of an object like "Source": "your-imap-server-1")
  • Name - The name the thing being detected must have. (Required)
  • CaseSenstive - Must the casing match? (Default: false)
• Regex - Detects if a certain key matches the specified regex.
  • Key - The key to match against. (Required - See all available keys here)
  • Pattern - The regex pattern to use for matching. (Required - Uses JS syntax without the slashes)
  • Flags - Regex flags to use (Default: "")
  • AllowMissing - If the key does not exist, should the detector allow the thing? (Default: false)
• Custom - Allows you to write your own detector using JavaScript.

  • File - The path to the JavaScript file containing the code. (Required)

    An example detector checking if the name of a thing ends with a certain string can look like this:

    module.exports = {
      /**
       * Called once when the detector is initialized. Use this for reading configuration or perform other startup related tasks.
       * @param {object} options The configuration of the detector. Access via `this.config(key, default, options)`.
       * @returns {void | Promise<void>} Once everything has been set up.
       */
      init(options) {
        this.logger.debug('My detector "init" called!');
        // Instead of "Error" you can also provide a default value if the options is not required.
        this.stringEnding = this.config('EndsWith', Error, options);
      },
      /**
       * A function that checks if the given thing matches this detector.
       * @param {Thing} thing The thing to check.
       * @returns {boolean | Promise<boolean>} Does the thing match the detector?
       */
      detect(thing) {
        const name = thing.get('name');
        this.logger.debug('My detector "detect" called!', name);
        return name.endsWith(this.stringEnding);
      },
    }

    If your detector does not need an init function you also also just directly export a function which will then be used as the detect function. Should you not want to use OOP style programming (this) all functions also receive the detector as a second parameter.

Limiting the messages

The Message options is effectively the same as the Source option, with the only difference that the detector gets passed the message thing instead of the source thing.

// appsettings/04-message-detector.jsonc
// Checks if the subject of a mail starts with "alert" (case insensitive)
{
  "Forward": {
    "your-forward-1": {
      "Message": {
        "Type": "Regex",
        "Pattern": "^alert",
        "Flags": "i",
        "Key": "name"
      }
    }
  }
}

Formatting the messages

The most fun thing to customize is still missing, it's the visible output, generated by the formatter. The initial config does not specify a formatter, therefore falling back to the default formatter without any options.

// appsettings/05-formatter.jsonc
// Omits the sender of the message and adds "[CRITICAL INFORMATION]" to the subject.
{
  "Forward": {
    "your-forward-1": {
      "Formatter": {
        "Type": "Default",
        "IncludeSender": false,
        "PrependSubject": "[CRITICAL INFORMATION] - "
      }
    }
  }
}

The following formatter types are available:

• Default - The default formatter. Uses the name of the thing as title, the content converted to markdown as description and the source & origin as footer.
  • IncludeSubject - Include the name in the format? (Default: true)
  • ReplaceSubject - Replaces the name with the given value (Default: null)
  • AppendSubject - Appends the given string to the name (Default: "")
  • PrependSubject - Prepends the given string to the name (Default: "")
  • IncludeSender - Include the origin in the format? (Default: true)
  • ReplaceSender - Replaces the origin with the given value (Default: null)
  • AppendSender - Appends the given string to the origin (Default: "")
  • PrependSender - Prepends the given string to the origin (Default: "")
  • IncludeBody - Include the content in the format? (Default: true)
  • ReplaceBody - Replaces the content with the given value (Default: null)
  • AppendBody - Appends the given string to the content (Default: "")
  • PrependBody - Prepends the given string to the content (Default: "")
  • IncludeServer - Include the source in the format? (Default: true)
  • ReplaceServer - Replaces the source with the given value (Default: null)
  • AppendServer - Appends the given string to the source (Default: "")
  • PrependServer - Prepends the given string to the source (Default: "")
• Debug - A debug formatter that formats the raw thing passed to it. Useful when developing your own formatter and you want to check what a message contains.
• Custom - Allows you to write your own formatter using JavaScript.

  • File - The path to the JavaScript file containing the code. (Required)

    An example formatter sending the amount of bytes of the mail content:

    module.exports = {
      /**
       * Called once when the formatter is initialized. Use this for reading configuration or perform other startup related tasks.
       * @param {object} options The configuration of the formatter. Access via `this.config(key, default, options)`.
       * @returns {void | Promise<void>} Once everything has been set up.
       */
      init(options) {
        this.logger.debug('My formatter "init" called!');
        // You can also set the default to Error to mark the option as required.
        this.formatTitle = this.config('SetTitleTo', 'Mail server disk usage increased', options);
      },
      /**
       * A function that formats the given thing.
       * @param {Thing} thing The thing to format.
       * @returns {MessageBuilder | MessageBuilder[] | Promise<MessageBuilder | MessageBuilder[]>} The format or formats.
       */
      format(thing) {
        const content = thing.get('content');
        const bytes = content.length;
        this.logger.debug('My formatter "format" called!', bytes);
        return this
          .messageBuilder
          .setTitle(this.formatTitle)
          .setDescription(`+ **${bytes}** bytes`);
      },
    }

    The same init and OOP related concepts as in detectors also apply for formatters..

Available keys

Different things have different keys available.

When using things in custom detectors/formatters the value of a key can be obtained using the get(key) function.

Available on all things

• id - A unique ID of the thing. (Type: string)
• name - A human readable name of the thing (Type: string)
• type - The type of the thing (e.g. "message") (Type: string)
• subtype - A more specific description of the type (e.g. "imap") (Type: string)

Available on messages

Hint: The subject of the message is stored as the name.

• content - The content of the message. (Type: string)
• origin - An array of senders of the message. For mail addresses the mail itself is used as id and the name of the contact is the name. (Type: { id: string, name: string }[])
• destination - An array of recipients of the message. For mail addresses the mail itself is used as id and the name of the contact is the name. (Type: { id: string, name: string }[])
• source - The name of the source the message originates from. (Type: string)
• source-thing - The thing of the source the message originates from. (Type: Thing)
• forward - The name of the forward the message is handled by. (Type: string)
• forward-thing - The thing of the forward the message is handled by. (Type: Thing)

Available on sources

• user - The user the source is owned by. (Type: string)
• collection - The collection searched by the source.(For mails this is generally the mailbox. (Type: string)

Docker

You can use the following docker-compose.yml to run imap-to-discord (Make sure to replace <APPSETTINGS_LOCATION> and <CACHE_LOCATION>):

version: '3.5'

services:
  imaptodiscord:
    container_name: imaptodiscord
    image: sahnee/imaptodiscord:latest
    volumes:
       - <APPSETTINGS_LOCATION>:/imaptodiscord/appsettings
       - <CACHE_LOCATION>:/imaptodiscord/cache
    restart: unless-stopped

Keep in mind that when using docker only the appsettings directory is supported, since the single file already contains docker specific default configuration.