3.1 Mail in Development Environment

Communote sends mails in different situations like when new users are invited or notifications are sent. Therefore, an SMTP server needs to be configured even in a development environment. You could install a local SMTP server but this might be to cumbersome for developing a plugin.

Starting with Communote version 3.5 there is an alternative which allows storing the mails in the filesystem or using a catch-all address (e.g. from a public ESP) for all outgoing mails. To configure one of these variants you’ll have to create a Java properties file named development.properties in the Communote configuration directory. This is the same directory which also contains the startup.properties file. In this file the property mailout.mode defines how mails should be sent. The following modes are supported:

• FILESYSTEM: don’t send any mails but store them as files in the subdirectory DevMimeMessageStore of Communote’s data directory
• CATCH_ALL: send all mails via SMTP to a configurable catch-all address instead of the destined recipient. The catch-all address can be configured in the same file with the property mailout.catchall.address. The original recipient will be stored in one of the mail headers Communote-Original-To, Communote-Original-Bcc or Communote-Original-Cc depending on whether it was found in the To, Bcc or Cc field.
• SMTP: send all mails via SMTP. This behaves exactly as if the development.properties doesn’t exist or is empty.
• Any other value is ignored and SMTP is assumed.

As an example the development.properties for redirecting all mails to communote_dev@localhost would look like this:

mailout.mode = CATCH_ALL
mailout.catchall.address = communote_dev@localhost

After creating or modifying the development.properties file, Communote has to be restarted.