Dan Mayer's Blog

A simple ruby email2rss example

When I was searching for some basic ruby scripts to download pop email I came across the email 2 Rss project on Ruby forge. Since I noticed there was no code available for the project yet I figured I would make a quick version up and make the code available, so anyone else searching for similar examples would have a starting point.

This code is just a functional example, but doesn't have any real options or error checking so use at your own risk.

Download the source to Ruby Email to RSS Feed

require 'net/pop'
require 'rss/maker'

version = "2.0" # ["0.9", "1.0", "2.0"]

destination = "/archive/emailFeed.xml" # local file to write

#create a new email Feed

content = RSS::Maker.make(version) do |rss|

  rss.channel.title = "Dan Email Feed"

  rss.channel.link = "http://www.pretheory.com" 

  rss.channel.description = "My newest emails" 

  rss.items.do_sort = true # sort items by date

  

  Net::POP3.start('pop.yourDomain.com', 110,

                    'userName', 'myPass') do |pop|

    if pop.mails.empty?

      puts 'No mail.'

    else

      i = 0

      pop.each_mail do |m|   # or "pop.mails.each ..."

        subject = m.header.split("\r\n").grep(/^Subject: /)[0]

        subject = subject.gsub("Subject: ","")

        subject = subject.gsub(":","")

        subject = subject[0,15] if(subject.length > 15)

        link = 'http://www.gmail.com'

        body = m.pop

        body = body[0,25] if(body.length > 25)

        

        #create feed item

        item = rss.items.new_item

        item.title = subject

        item.link = link

        item.date = Time.now

        item.description = body

        i += 1

      end

      puts "#{pop.mails.size} mails popped."

    end

  end

end

File.open(destination,"w") do |f|

  f.write(content)

end

puts 'Done. Thanks.'