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Internally an email server uses directories like Windows or Linux. There is nothing really unique about directories. Externally though it works in a different m
by Scott_MacGregor 16y ago
Internally an email server uses directories like Windows or Linux. There is nothing really unique about directories. Externally though it works in a different manner.
The "http" protocol is an internet standard that is set aside for a specific purpose that does not include email. You could probably modify an email server to allow posting the messages in an email mailbox to an apache web server directory to be able to use the "http" protocol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol
Email has its own set of standards about how it works so that one email server can talk to other email servers and the DNS system. The http protocol is not part of this. So it seems like the email would need to be sent via standard email protocols and then moved to an Apache webserver directory as a copy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address
Email is pretty simple, if I were doing it I would set up an email server and an apache server on Centos5x and play with it. You can probably make it happen.
Postfix/Dovecot is a popular email combo.
- adelevie 16y agoWouldn't a modern email server use a database and not a file system with directories?
- Scott_MacGregor 16y agoThere is no reason it could not use a database, but not that I know of. The email messages end up in a directory in plain text. So for instance if you are running MS Server 2003 with the MS email server setup, the system admin (with the proper permissions) can go in and read your emails with notepad. Same goes for Linux email servers. Maybe Gmail (or another huge service provider) uses a database on the backend, but as far as I know email is just directories and text files.
- jaredsohn 16y agoEven if it does write to a database, assuming that you can programmatically access it, you could build something that works with apache (or runs its own webserver) to translate URLs into doing database lookups. If you were to actually go about doing this (regardless of whether it is text files or a database), you'd also want to automatically include the URLs within the emails themselves, which I would think many mail servers would let you do.
- davidu 16y agoThis is exceptionally rare, and no major email server does this. File systems are reliable, easily scaled and distributed and backed up. :-)