Mailscan

Mailscan is an application built with 2 Dockers to automate ocr-ing pdfs (presumably sent by your scanner by mail to a dedicated mailbox), and uploading them to a webdav server (like Nextcloud).

Basically it is a combination of Rocketload, extended with a module to send files to a ocrmypdf docker to ocr them. After this, the file is uploaded to a webdav server.

The purpose of this is to automate scanning paper mail: the scanner has an email address in the adresbook where the (pdf) scans are sent. The application fetches mail from this addres (and deletes them), and uploads the ocr'ed scans to a webdavserver, so they can be indexed.

Installation

On a machine that has a recent version of Docker installed (including docker compose):

• copy the docker-compose.yml file in a directory
• copy the mailscan.json.example file, and rename it to mailscan.json
• edit the mailscan.json file
• start the proces with docker-compose up
• you can make it a systemd service

There is no need to build the docker image; a pre-built will be pulled. Unless you want to change any functionality, only docker-compose.yml and mailscan.json are needed

Note: this can be any machine, as long as it can reach the mailbox and the webdav server.

Configuration

The configuration cosist of a JSON file called mailscan.json. It has following keys:

pollInterval: How many seconds between every poll to the email server

imap: Configuration of IMAP server
imap.host: Host of IMAP server
imap.user: IMAP username
imap.password: IMAP password
imap.folder: The IMAP folder to look for mails in
imap.deletefetched: Remove fetched mails from mailbox (useful when you have a dedicated mailbox)

webdav: WebDav configuration
webdav.url: URL of WebDav folder to upload files to
webdav.username: WebDav username
webdav.password: WebDav password

ocr: ocr configuration
ocr.containername: name of the service in docker-compose.yml
ocr.containerport: port of the service in docker-compose.yml
ocr.scanname: static name from your scanner this will be converted to a name with a timestamp ( scan.pdf -> scan_YYYYMMDD_hhmmss.pdf e.g. scan_20220120_135708.pdf, to ensure unique filenames on the webdav drive)

Example of full configuration:

{
    "pollInterval": 3,
    "imap": {
        "host": "imap.gmail.com",
        "user": "[email protected]",
        "password": "secretpassword",
	"folder": "INBOX",
        "deletefetched": true
    },
    "webdav": {
        "url": "https://my.webdav.server/mydata/mailscan/uploads",
        "username": "john",
        "password": "passwordSecret"
    },
    "ocr": {
        "containername": "ocrmypdf-webservice",
        "containerport": 5000,
        "scanname": "scan.pdf"
  }
}

Make it a systemd-service

If you want this to run on a Linux server somewhere, why not make it a systemd service. prerequisites: make sure Docker and docker-compose are installed

create a file /etc/systemd/system/mailscan.service like this:

[Unit]
Description=mailscan and ocrmypdf in Docker-compose (/srv/ocrmypdf)
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Restart=always
WorkingDirectory=/srv/ocrmypdf
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f /srv/ocrmypdf/docker-compose.yml up
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f /srv/ocrmypdf/docker-compose.yml stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

(assuming everything is in /srv/ocrmypdf)

issue these commands:

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl enable mailscan.service

systemctl start mailscan.service

logfile can be inspected with

journalctl -u mailscan.service -f

Contributing

Feel free to create an issue or open a merge request.