Email2HTTP in ASP.NET

Right, so here is some sample code and tutorial to get Email2HTTP to work with ASP.NET. Its extremely simple:

First, sign up for an account at Email2HTTP.com. Once you have your account, set up a domain or use the sample on they give you when you sign up:

Once your domain is setup (I used the sample, so everything, including MX records and DNS was already setup. if you are using a different one, you will need to follow the instructions) you need to add a Target URL. this is where email gets redirected to.

Name your target and add the URL you want to receive the email. next, we you are going to want to write the code.

Here is a VERY SIMPLE example I have built. I built it in a ASP.NET handler page (ASHX). this just made my life a little easer.

public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {
       string subject = “”;
       string body = “”;
       context.Response.Write(context.Request.Form.Keys.Count);
       context.Response.Write(“
”);
       subject = context.Request.Form.Get(“subject”);
       body = context.Request.Form.Get(“body”);
       context.Response.Write(s);
       context.Response.Write(“
”);
       context.Response.Write(“Body: ” + body);
       context.Response.Write(“
”);
       context.Response.Write(“Subject: ” + subject);
   }<p mce_keep="true"> </p>

Anything that is written back gets emailed back to the user. So, if you emailed, say a stock symbol, you could call a web service, get some information and send it back to the user via email.

This is very cool! Couple of things that would be nice: instead of calling the webserver directly with all the posted data, which is done now and could be “spoofed”, call the webserver and post a key, which could be used then by the server to call the service and get the information. this could also be handy for servers which are inside a network: they could poll the service every, say, 5 minutes and pull information down. It would not be real time, but it would allow “hidden” servers to use the service.