Mail Servers

This chapter is about one of Twisted's greatest strengths: running mail and news servers. Twisted includes modules that you can use to build SMTP, POP3, IMAP, and NNTP servers from scratch, which can be incredibly useful when you have a server application that needs to send, receive, or store email. Server email integration has traditionally required a heavyweight mail server, with a bunch of custom shell scripts to push and pull data between the mail server and your application. But by using Twisted, you can design a mail or news server that does exactly what you need, and that doesn't even require a separate process. This chapter shows you how.