HK1122430A1

HK1122430A1 - Method, apparatus and system for processing electronic mail

Info

Publication number: HK1122430A1
Application number: HK09102568.9A
Authority: HK
Inventors: 陈波
Original assignee: 阿里巴巴集团控股有限公司
Priority date: 2007-06-12
Filing date: 2009-03-18
Publication date: 2009-05-15
Also published as: CN101325561B; CN101325561A

Abstract

The invention discloses a method for processing e-mail, including that: users register a website server, and transmits a request message for receiving mail to an agent server through the website server, wherein, the request message carries mailbox identifications of at least one electric mailbox bond to users; the agent server downloads mails from a corresponding mail server according to the mailbox identification carried in the request message, and than transmits the updated mail information to users through the website server; the agent server transmits the appointed mail according to a user's selection to the user through the website server. So that users can directly receive mails from one or more mail server by the website server, accordingly reducing the operating complexity of users, and improving users' experience in a certain extent. The invention discloses a communication apparatus and a communicating system.

Description

Method, device and system for processing e-mail

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of computer communications, and in particular, to a method, an apparatus, and a system for processing an email.

Background

At present, many users have their own email addresses, and when a user registers in a certain website (referred to as website a), if the website a does not provide email service (e.g. an electronic commerce network or an internet bank), the user needs to bind their own email address (referred to as mailbox 1) in the registration information, so as to receive the relevant information sent by the website a at any time.

However, in the prior art, after the user logs in the website a through the client, the user also logs in a mail server to which the mailbox 1 belongs or receives the electronic mail sent by the website a through other mail agent software (such as Outlook or Foxmail), so that the complexity of the user operation is increased, and the use of the user is inconvenient.

On the other hand, if mailbox 1 is a public mailbox, when a plurality of users logging in website a access mailbox 1 at the same time, a large number of concurrent requests will bring huge access pressure to the mail server, and in a serious case, the operating system of the mail server may crash due to the inability to load the current workload.

Disclosure of Invention

The embodiment of the invention provides a method, a device and a system for processing an email, which enable a user to receive the email from a designated mail server through a website server when logging in the website server which does not provide email service.

The technical scheme provided by the embodiment of the invention comprises the following steps:

a method of processing email, comprising:

a user logs in a website server and sends a request message for receiving a mail to a proxy server through the website server, wherein the request message carries a mailbox identifier of at least one electronic mailbox bound by the user;

the proxy server judges whether the corresponding electronic mailbox is registered according to the mailbox identification contained in the request message, and if the corresponding electronic mailbox is registered, the request is rejected; if not, acquiring the time for processing the corresponding mail data for the last time according to the mailbox identification, further judging whether the interval between the time and the current time is less than a set threshold value, and if so, rejecting the request message; if the mail is not less than the threshold value, responding to the request message and executing subsequent operation, namely downloading the mail from a corresponding mail server according to the mailbox identification carried in the request message, and sending the updated mail information list to the user through the website server;

and the proxy server sends the appointed mail to the user through the website server according to the selection of the user.

A communication system, comprising:

the mail server is used for storing mail data of the user;

the website server is used for sending a request message for receiving the mail to the proxy server, and forwarding a mail information list sent by the proxy server and the mail specified by the user to the corresponding user, wherein the request message carries a mailbox identifier of at least one electronic mailbox bound by the user logging in the website server;

the proxy server is used for judging whether the corresponding electronic mailbox is registered according to the mailbox identification contained in the request message, and refusing the request if the corresponding electronic mailbox is registered; if not, acquiring the time for processing the corresponding mail data for the last time according to the mailbox identification, further judging whether the interval between the time and the current time is less than a set threshold value, and if so, rejecting the request message; and if the mail is not less than the threshold, responding to the request message and executing subsequent operation, namely downloading the mail from a corresponding mail server according to the mailbox identification carried in the received request message, and sending the updated mail information list and the mail specified by the user to the website server.

In the embodiment of the invention, when a user logs in a certain website server which does not provide email service, a request message for receiving emails is sent to a proxy server through the website server, and the request message carries an email identifier of at least one email bound by the user; and the proxy server downloads the mail from the corresponding mail server according to the mailbox identification carried in the request message and sends the appointed mail to the user through the website server according to the selection of the user. Therefore, the user can directly receive the mails from one or more mail servers through the website server, so that the complexity of user operation is reduced, and the user experience is improved to a certain extent. Meanwhile, the proxy server plays a buffering role between the website server and the corresponding mail server, and when the website server concurrently sends a large number of request messages, the proxy server relieves the access pressure caused by a large number of concurrent requests to the mailbox server, thereby improving the stability of the system to a certain extent.

Drawings

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a communication system architecture in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 1B is a functional diagram of a proxy server according to an embodiment of the present invention;

fig. 2 is a flowchart of the operation of the proxy server in the embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

When a user logs in a website server which does not provide an email service, in order to enable the user to receive emails sent by other email servers (namely, a POP3 server) through the website server, in the embodiment of the invention, the user logs in the website server and sends a request message for receiving the emails to a proxy server through the website server, wherein the request message carries a mailbox identifier of at least one email mailbox bound by the user; the proxy server downloads the mail from the corresponding POP3 server according to the mailbox identification carried in the request message, and sends the updated mail information list to the user through the website server; and the proxy server sends the appointed mail to the user through the website server according to the selection of the user.

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Referring to fig. 1, the communication system in the present embodiment includes a web server 10, a proxy server 11, a cache server 12, a storage device 13, and a POP3 server 14.

The website server 10 is configured to provide a website service for a user, send a request message sent by the user to the proxy server 11 when the user needs to receive a mail, send a mail information list for the user, which is sent by the proxy server 11, to the user, and forward a corresponding mail returned by the proxy server 11 to the user after the user selects a mail that needs to be downloaded.

The proxy server 11 is configured to receive a request message sent by the website server 10 and used for receiving an email, where the request message carries a mailbox identifier of an email mailbox bound by a user who logs in the website server 10; the proxy server 11 downloads the mail from the corresponding POP3 server 14 according to the mailbox identifier carried in the received request message, and updates the locally stored mail information list for the user; the proxy server 11 transmits the updated mail information list to the web server 10, and transmits a mail designated by the user to the web server 10 according to the user's selection.

The cache server 12 is configured to store the registration information of the electronic mailbox carried in the request message when the proxy server 11 processes the received request message.

The storage device 13 is used for storing the mail downloaded from the POP3 server 14 by the proxy server 11.

The POP3 server 14 is used for storing mail data of users and sending corresponding mails to the proxy server 11 according to the operation command of the proxy server 11.

In practical applications, the functions of the proxy server 11, the cache server 12 and the storage device 13 may be integrated into the same functional entity, or the proxy server 11 may also exist as a functional module in other communication devices, and various system architectures may achieve the same inventive effect.

Referring to fig. 1B, the proxy server 11 includes a storage unit 110, a receiving unit 111, a processing unit 112, and a transmitting unit 113.

The storage unit 110 is used for storing a mail information list of a user;

the receiving unit 111 is used for receiving a request message sent by the website server 10 to receive the mail and the mail downloaded by the proxy server 11 from the POP3 server 14;

the processing unit 112 is configured to download the mail from the corresponding POP3 server 14 according to the mailbox identifier carried in the request message, and update the mail information list of the user;

the sending unit is configured to send the updated mail information list and the mail specified by the user to the web server 10.

In the embodiment of the present invention, the number of the proxy servers 11 may be one or more, and if there are multiple proxy servers 11 (i.e. a proxy server cluster), load balancing is implemented in the proxy server cluster by using hardware or software, and the request message sent by the web server 10 is uniformly distributed to each server in the cluster.

In order to realize mass storage of data and ensure security of client data, a preferred embodiment is to use a professional storage device to store mail data, but the professional storage device is expensive, and if the storage devices 13 in the mail agent system are all configured as high-performance professional storage devices, the cost for building the mail agent system will be increased. Therefore, according to the characteristics that recent mail data in the mail data has a high access possibility and a high access speed requirement, and historical mail data has a low access possibility and a relatively low access speed, the present embodiment separately stores the mail data according to the receiving time of the mail data, and because of the limitation of a file system, the number of files/directories under the same directory is not too large, so that a storage path of the mail data is obtained by adopting an algorithm of "year + month + date + N-level random directory + random file name", wherein each level of random directory name only includes two american standard code (asci) letters/numbers, so as to ensure that the number of subdirectories under each level of directory does not exceed 36 × 36 — 1296; meanwhile, in order to ensure the access speed of recent mail data, recent mails (such as mail data of a week) are stored on a high-performance professional storage device, and historical mail data is stored on a low-cost storage device (such as a read-only device) with a slower access speed.

Based on the above system architecture, in this embodiment, the website server 10 is a server of the website a, and the website server 10 does not provide an email service, the POP3 server 14 is a mail server to which an email (mailbox 1) of the user belongs, and the user binds information of the mailbox 1 in registration information of the user when registering in the website a, and the user may also bind information of a plurality of other email boxes (e.g., mailbox 2, mailbox 3, and mailbox 4) in the registration information at the same time, which is described in this embodiment by taking only mailbox 1 as an example.

Referring to fig. 2, the detailed flow of the mail received by the proxy server 11 from the POP3 server 14 is as follows:

step 200: after the user logs in to the website a, a request message (referred to as message 1) for receiving a mail from the mailbox 1 is sent to the proxy server 11 through the website server 10, and the message 1 includes a mailbox identifier (referred to as identifier 1) of the mailbox 1.

Step 210: after receiving the message 1 sent by the website server 10, the proxy server 11 checks the use condition of the threads in the local thread pool, and determines whether a thread in an idle state exists in the currently established threads, if yes, then step 220 is performed; otherwise, step 230 is performed.

In practical application, when the proxy server 11 concurrently processes more request messages, a corresponding number of threads are created according to actual needs to complete operations; meanwhile, when the proxy server 11 is idle, the thread which has been idle for a long time is cancelled, so as to release the system resources and reduce the system load. Both the creation and the revocation of threads consume certain system resources, so the proxy server 11 attempts to reuse established threads when processing received request messages, rather than creating new threads each time. In order to facilitate the management of the local threads by the proxy server 11, the present embodiment introduces a concept of "thread pool" for controlling the number of active threads in the proxy server 11, and the set relevant parameters are as follows:

< a > minimum number of threads: the minimum number of threads that the proxy server 11 needs to maintain, which cannot be revoked even if they are all in an idle state;

< b > maximum number of threads: the maximum number of threads that the proxy server 11 can process in parallel.

< c > maximum thread idle time: a maximum time for allowing the redundant threads to be in an idle state when the number of threads established in the proxy server 11 is greater than the "minimum number of threads"; if the time that a thread in the redundant threads is in the idle state exceeds a set threshold, the proxy server 11 cancels the thread.

Step 220: the proxy server 11 allocates a thread from the currently idle thread to process message 1, and then proceeds to step 260.

Step 230: the proxy server 11 further determines whether the number of threads established exceeds the maximum number of threads, if so, proceeds to step 240; otherwise, proceed to step 250.

Step 240: the proxy server 11 adds the message 1 to the wait queue, processes the message 1 by a thread when the thread enters an idle state, and then proceeds to step 260.

Step 250: the proxy server 11 creates a new thread in the thread pool through which message 1 is processed, followed by step 260.

Step 260: the proxy server 11 further determines whether to respond to the message 1 according to the relevant record of the cache server 12, if so, performs step 270; otherwise, the current flow is ended.

In practical applications, the website server 10 may continuously send the same request message to the proxy server 11 due to user operation, and for this situation, the following method is adopted in the present embodiment: because the request message carries the mailbox identifier of the user email, when the proxy server 11 processes the request message, the corresponding email needs to be registered in the cache server 12 according to the mailbox identifier contained in the request message to indicate that the mail data in the email is being processed, and after the processing operation is executed, the proxy server 11 also needs to record the last processing time in the cache server 12 and log out the email; if the request message carries mailbox identifiers of a plurality of electronic mailboxes, the proxy server 11 performs parallel processing on the mailbox identifiers in the request message.

According to the above method, in this embodiment, the proxy server 11 determines whether to respond to the received message 1 by the following two methods.

The first method comprises the following steps: the proxy server 11 judges whether the mailbox 1 is registered in the cache server 12 according to the identifier 1 contained in the message 1, if so, the current process is ended; otherwise, the judgment is continued through a second method.

The second method comprises the following steps: the proxy server 11 obtains the time for processing the mail data in the mailbox 1 for the last time according to the identifier 1 contained in the message 1, and further judges whether the interval between the time and the current time is smaller than a set threshold value, if so, the proxy server 11 considers that the frequency of sending the message 1 by the website server 10 is too frequent and automatically ends the current process; otherwise, the proxy server 11 responds to message 1.

Step 270: the proxy server 11 registers mailbox 1 in the cache server 12 and sends a Unique mail identifier list (UIDL) command to the POP3 server 14.

If the request message sent by the web server 10 carries mailbox identifiers of a plurality of electronic mailboxes, the proxy server 11 registers the mailbox identifiers in the request message in the cache server 12 at the same time, and sends UIDL commands to the POP3 servers corresponding to the mailbox identifiers, respectively.

Step 280: the POP3 server 14 returns the ID list of all mails in the current mailbox 1 to the proxy server 11, and the proxy server 11 updates the mail ID list stored locally and the mails stored in the storage device 13 accordingly according to the received mail ID list.

In this embodiment, the proxy server 11 stores a list of IDs of mails downloaded from mailbox 1 last time (referred to as list C), and when the proxy server 11 receives a list of IDs of all mails in current mailbox 1 returned by POP3 server 14 (referred to as list S), the list S is differentially compared with the list C:

1) if the ID of a certain mail is recorded in the list S but not in the list C, the proxy server 11 attributes the ID of the mail to the "new mail set", downloads the corresponding mail from the mailbox 1 of the POP3 server 14 according to the mail ID in the "new mail set", and stores the newly downloaded mail to the corresponding location of the storage device 13.

2) If the ID of a certain mail is recorded in both the list S and the list C, the proxy server 11 attributes the ID of the mail to "reserved mail set".

3) If the ID of a certain mail is recorded in the list C but not in the list S, the proxy server 11 attributes the ID of the mail to the "mail set to be deleted".

After dividing the mails in the list S and the list C into three types, the proxy server 11 performs different operations according to the number of mail IDs in the "mail set to be deleted":

if the number of mail IDs in the "mail set to be deleted" does not reach the set threshold, the proxy server 11 retains the existing list C, and records the mail IDs in the "new mail set" into the list C, which is called an "attachment mode".

If the number of the mail IDs in the "mail set to be deleted" has reached the set threshold, the proxy server 11 backs up the existing list C as c.bak, creates a new list C at the same time, records the mail IDs in the "new mail set" and the "reserved mail set" in the new list C, and then deletes the previous backup file c.bak, which is called "rebuilding mode". If the process of executing the "rebuilding method" is interrupted abnormally due to an accident, the information in the newly created list C is unreliable, and at this time, the proxy server 11 deletes the newly created list C, restores the original list C according to the backup file C.

Step 290: the proxy server 11 presents the information in the newly created list C to the user through the web server 10, and transmits a corresponding mail to the user through the web server 10 according to the user's operation.

In the above embodiment, the website server 10 sends the request message to the proxy server 11 in an asynchronous manner, that is, the website server 10 only adds the request message into the queue after generating the request message, and does not wait for confirming that the request message is sent and does not wait for receiving the processing result of the request message, and the background worker thread polls and checks the queue element to complete information interaction with the mail proxy server 11, so that the availability and processing efficiency of the proxy server 11 do not affect the response speed of the website server 10, thereby ensuring the use experience of the user to a certain extent.

In summary, in the embodiment of the present invention, when a user logs in a website server 10 that does not provide an email service, the user can directly receive emails from one or more POP3 servers through the website server 10, so that the complexity of user operations is reduced, and the user experience is improved to a certain extent; meanwhile, the proxy server 11 plays a role in buffering between the website server 10 and the corresponding POP3 server, and when the website server 10 concurrently sends a large number of request messages, the proxy server 11 relieves the access pressure caused by a large number of concurrent requests to the POP3 server, thereby improving the stability of the system to a certain extent.

On the other hand, in the embodiment of the present invention, the proxy server 11 can reasonably allocate system resources such as threads and memories according to the load of the system, so that the response speed of the system to the web server 10 is ensured; meanwhile, the proxy server 11 stores the mail data in a distributed manner according to the download date of the mail, which not only ensures the access speed of the recent mail data, but also reduces the cost invested on the storage device 13.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications may be made in the present invention without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Thus, if such modifications and variations of the present invention fall within the scope of the claims of the present invention and their equivalents, the present invention is also intended to include such modifications and variations.

Claims

1. A method of processing electronic mail, comprising the steps of:

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the proxy server, upon receiving a request message sent by a user, allocates a thread for processing the request message from a local thread pool for controlling the number of active threads.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein if there is an active thread in an idle state in the thread pool, the proxy server allocates a thread to process the request message from the active thread in the idle state;

if the thread pool does not have the active threads in the idle state, the proxy server judges whether the number of the active threads in the thread pool reaches the maximum thread number, if so, the proxy server adds the request message into a waiting queue and distributes the thread to the request message when a certain active thread is in the idle state; otherwise, the proxy server creates a thread for processing the request message.

4. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the proxy server registers the corresponding electronic mailbox according to the mailbox identifier included in the request message after responding to the received request message, and records the current time and cancels the electronic mailbox after processing the mail data in the electronic mailbox.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the proxy server, when processing mail data in an electronic mailbox, performs the following:

the proxy server sends a command for requesting a mail information list to a mail server to which the electronic mailbox belongs and receives a first list returned by the mail server, wherein the first list comprises mail identifiers of all mails which are currently stored by the mail server and belong to the electronic mailbox;

the proxy server compares the item content of the first list with the item content of a second list stored locally, and carries out corresponding processing on the second list according to the comparison result and downloads the mail from the mail server; wherein the second list comprises the mail identifications of all mails which are currently saved by the proxy server and belong to the electronic mailbox.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the proxy server, when aligning the first list with the second list, performs the following:

if a certain mail identifier is recorded in the first list but not in the second list, the proxy server attributing the mail identifier to a new mail set;

if a certain mail identifier is recorded in the first list and the second list at the same time, the proxy server attributing the mail identifier to a reserved mail set;

and if a certain mail identifier is recorded in the second list but not recorded in the first list, the proxy server attributing the mail identifier to the mail set to be deleted.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the proxy server performs the following operations when processing the second list according to the comparison result of the first list and the second list:

if the number of the mail identifiers in the mail set to be deleted does not reach a set threshold value, the proxy server records the mail identifiers in the new mail set into the second list, and the second list is sent to the user through the website server;

and if the number of the mail identifications in the mail set to be deleted reaches a set threshold value, the proxy server creates a third list, records the mail identifications in the new mail set and the reserved mail set into the third list, deletes the second list at the same time, and sends the third list to the user through the website server.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the proxy server downloads the mail from the mail server according to the mail identifier in the new mail set after obtaining the comparison result between the first list and the second list, and stores the mail in a designated storage device.

9. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the proxy server stores the received mails in designated storage locations respectively according to download times of the mails.

10. A communication system, comprising:

the mail server is used for storing mail data of the user;

11. The communication system of claim 10, further comprising:

the cache server is used for storing the registration information of the electronic mailbox carried in the request message when the proxy server processes the received request message;

and the storage device is used for storing the mails downloaded from the mail server by the proxy server.

12. The communication system of claim 10, wherein the proxy server comprises:

the storage unit is used for storing a mail information list of a user;

the receiving unit is used for receiving a request message sent by a website server and used for receiving a mail and the mail downloaded from the mail server by the communication device, wherein the request message carries a mailbox identifier of an electronic mailbox bound by a user logging in the website server;

the processing unit is used for downloading the mail from the corresponding mail server according to the mailbox identification carried in the received request message and updating the mail information list of the user;

and the sending unit is used for sending the updated mail information list and the mail specified by the user to the website server.