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MailSlurp has a concept called that allow you to create complex rules and patterns for an inbox to control:
- what emails are accepted by an inbox
- what recipients an inbox can send emails to
You can add multiple rules to an inbox using wildcard patterns and standard email address matching. This guide explains different use cases with examples and documentation.
Inbox ruleset lifecycle
Here is a brief overview of how inbox rulesets are evaluated. If an inbox has rulesets they will be evaluated against email addresses within outbound and bound emails to block, filter, or allow the sending or receiving action.
Emails that are blocked during receiving are stored as missed emails and can be accessed in the dashboard or via the API.
Structure of rulesets
Each inbox ruleset has the following properties
| Property | Description | Example values |
|---|---|---|
| inboxId | ID of inbox to attach ruleset to | |
| scope | When to evaluate a ruleset | |
| action | What action to take if rule matches | |
| target | The pattern to match email sender or recipients against. Can be a wildcard pattern using | |
Scope types
| Scope | Description |
|---|---|
| Inbox rulesets scoped to receiving emails will be evaluated whenever an attached inbox receives an email. Target is matched against the sender from field. Use with |
| Rules scoped to sending emails will be evaluated before emails are sent from an attached inbox. Use |
Action types
| Action | Works with Scope | Description |
|---|---|---|
| All scopes | If a ruleset matches a target email address in received or sending email the email will be blocked from being received or sent respectively. |
| All scopes | If a ruleset matches a target email address in any scope the email will be allowed to be sent or received. If you have several specific |
| | Will remove matching email address from an email before sending to ensure that email addresses cannot be sent to those addresses. Differs from |
Target syntax
The property of an inbox ruleset is a wildcard pattern or email address that can be used by the ruleset to evaluate inputs to see if the ruleset matches.
| Target type | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Wild card matching | | Use asterisk |
| Email matching | | Direct email matching (case insensitive) for more precise blocking, allowing, and filter of email addresses |
If you need to target multiple email addresses use multiple inbox rulesets or a wildcard pattern.
Action precedence
The action will always override if a ruleset matches for both. So if you add a ruleset to an inbox but also add an using the scope then the inbox will block all inbound emails except those from test@gmail.com. Read further for more information on scope.
actions have a higher precedence than so if two actions match for a ruleset target the will override the .
Creating inbox rulesets
To create a ruleset first create an inbox in the Mailslurp dashboard or using the API. You can then add as many rulesets as you wish to a given inbox using the inbox ID. Let's see different ways to create rulesets and the cover what different scopes and actions do.
Create rules in code
More code examples
To use Inbox Rulesets in code use the REST API or an official SDK client. Here we will configure the MailSlurp Javascript client to create and test inbox rulesets using jest.
Setup
Block sending
Filter remove when sending
In this example we demonstrate the use of action inbox ruleset to ensure that a particular email address cannot have emails sent to it from an inbox.
