Temporary email

This mini-project aims to create a mail server that generates disposable email addresses that expire after a few minutes.

User will receive an email address that can receive emails. Users can read mail in this address before the expiration. The mail account will be deleted after the expiration.

Running

Firstly, run the flask API:

export FLASK_ENV='development'
flask run

Next, run the SMTP server:

python3 server.py

You can try sending to a localhost mail server with python's smtplib.

Configuration

• SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI: URI to create database (See SQLAlchemy doc)
• ENV: Set to development to use another port than 25.
• HOST: The IP of the host
• HOST_PORT: The IP and port of the host
• If there is a domain name configured for this app, set both above
  variables to be the same as domain name.

Deployment instruction

The following instruction assumes that you are deploying to an Ubuntu server with Nginx as web server engine.

Step 1: Clone this project to the directory

Clone to the wanted folder. In this instruction, it's assumed to be /var/www/

cd /var/www/
git clone https://github.com/Huy-Ngo/temp-mail

Step 2: Create a configuration file

Note: values in <> should be replaced with appropriate values.

{
  "SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI": "<dialect+driver://username:password@host:port/database>",
  "ENV": "production",
  "SECRET_KEY": "<a long secret key>",
  "HOST_PORT": "<domain name>",
  "HOST": "<domain name>",
  "JWT_TOKEN_LOCATION": ["headers", "cookies"],
  "JWT_ERROR_MESSAGE_KEY": "message",
  "PROPAGATE_EXCEPTIONS": true
}

Step 3: Install dependencies

Install the dependencies in a virtual environment.

apt install nginx  # On Ubuntu or Debian-based server
pip install virtualenv
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
deactivate

Step 4: Write configuration files

You have to write the following configuration files:

• nginx configuration for port forwarding
• systemd configurations for:
  • temp-mail API/web server
  • SMTP server

nginx configuration: /etc/nginx/sites-availables/temp-mail

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name 15minmail.tk www.15minmail.tk;

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/var/www/temp-mail/temp-mail.sock;
    }
}

Make a symlink to sites-enabled

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-availables/temp-mail /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Temp-mail systemd configuration: /etc/systemd/system/temp-mail.service

[Unit]
Description=Gunicorn instance to serve Temporary Mail API
After=network.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/temp-mail
Environment="PATH=/var/www/temp-mail/venv/bin"
ExecStart=/var/www/temp-mail/venv/bin/gunicorn --workers 3 --bind unix:temp-mail.sock -m 007 wsgi:app

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

SMTP mail server configuration: /etc/systemd/system/smtp-server.service

[Unit]
Description=Service to run SMTP server.

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /var/www/temp-mail/server.py

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure all services are running:

systemctl restart nginx.service
systemctl restart temp-mail.service
systemctl restart smtp-server.service

Step 5: Allow nginx on ufw

ufw allow 'Nginx Full'