Keep raw messages for ever

[amkamir82]

Summary

Keep outgoing and incomming messages for ever in database.

Details

We can set the number of days that postal will keep our messages. We can set this number in advance settings of mail server. Is there any option that we can keep the messages for ever? For example, although I set that number to -1, it deleted the messages.

Is there such option in postal. If yes, help me. If not, what should we do? can. we set the number to 10000000 days? =)

[willpower232]

Postal isn't really designed for long term storage of messages, the search isn't that great and it doesn't have mailing lists, templates, or any real context around the messages.

Its better for you to log the message where it originates and listen to webhooks so your application can be sure of what happened to the message.

[amkamir82]

Thanks for the explanation. I checked the piece of code related to removing raw messages. Based on what I understood from the code and the docs, if max_age is set to -1, then no messages should ever be removed and they should stay on disk.

This is the snippet I’m referring to:

def remove_messages(max_age = 60)
  time = (Time.now.utc.to_date - max_age.days).to_time.end_of_day
  return unless newest_message_to_remove = @database.select(
    :messages,
    where: { timestamp: { less_than_or_equal_to: time.to_f } },
    limit: 1,
    order: :id,
    direction: "DESC",
    fields: [:id]
  ).first
end

With max_age = -1, the calculated time ends up in the future, meaning no record should satisfy timestamp <= time, so nothing should be removed.

[willpower232]

I don't know enough ruby to know if that is the answer or not but as I said, Postal wasn't intended for this purpose so there are bound to be a few accidental things in the way preventing it from happening

[amkamir82]

Thank you in advance for your response.