

Ask HN: URLs for emails - adelevie

Is there any way to create a URL for an email?<p>This would be very useful for work groups, ie:<p>&#62;I finished feature #12 per Bob Smith's email (http://gmail.com/bobsmith/emails/12345)<p>Of course this would need a robust auth/permissions system.<p>Has anything like this been done? If not, why?
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Scott_MacGregor
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>

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>

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.

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adelevie
Wouldn't a modern email server use a database and not a file system with
directories?

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Scott_MacGregor
There 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.

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jaredsohn
Even 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.

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jaredsohn
It looks like ccing messages to Google Groups would work.

Example:

[http://groups.google.com/group/east-bay-hacker-
news/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/east-bay-hacker-
news/browse_thread/thread/301040897998361d?hl=en)

I also checked a closed group that I belong to and verified that you can use a
link there as well but it requires that you log in with an account that has
access before you can read it.

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BobbyH
Basecamp lets you link to messages, comments on messages, to-do items, etc. It
has a robust per-project auth/permissions system. Other collaboration sites
offer something similar.

In general, when dealing with work that occurs via emails, it seems like it's
easier to build a separate system that has email notifications, versus trying
to glue features onto email.

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Semiapies
Gmail at least used to support sharing email URLs among the sender and
recipients of an email, so long as they had Gmail accounts. (Nobody else could
see them, naturally.) Useful for "...When did you send me that email?" "It's
_this_ email, <plink>."

I haven't tried it in awhile, though.

~~~
Semiapies
Update: Doesn't work, anymore. Sad.

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sammcd
It would be interesting to make a service where you forwarded your email to
somename@yournewapp.com and it replied with a link to that email so that you
could easily share it.

I haven't done my google homework. I wouldn't be surprised if it already
exists.

You could always use code pasting web sites as a quick fix.

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roam
Why wouldn't you simply forward the email to the people you want to share it
with?

~~~
adelevie
To refer to it outside of an email application.

