Basic description of the framework

README.md

 # Action Mailbox
 
-📬
+Action Mailbox routes incoming emails to controller-like mailboxes for further and encapsulated processing in Rails. 
+
+It ships with ingress handling for AWS SNS, Mailgun, Madrill, and Sendgrid. You can also handle inbound mails directly via the Postfix ingress task/controller combination.
+
+The inbound emails are turned into `InboundEmail` records using Active Record and feature lifecycle tracking, storage of the original email on cloud storage via Active Storage, and responsible data handling with on-by-default incineration.
+
+These inbound emails are routed asynchronously using Active Job to one or several dedicated mailboxes, which are capable of interacting directly with the rest of your domain model.
+
+## How does this compare to Action Mailer's inbound processing?
+
+Rails has long had an anemic way of [receiving emails using Action Mailer](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html#receiving-emails), but it was poorly flushed out, lacked cohesion with the task of sending emails, and offered no help on integrating with popular inbound email processing platforms. Action Mailbox supersedes the receiving part of Action Mailer, which will be deprecated in due course.
+
+## Installing
+
+Assumes a Rails 5.2+ application:
+
+1. Install the gem:
+
+    ```ruby
+    # Gemfile
+    gem "actionmailbox", github: "rails/actionmailbox", require: "action_mailbox"
+    ```
+   
+1. Install migrations needed for InboundEmail (and ensure Active Storage is setup)
+
+   ```
+   ./bin/rails action_mailbox:install
+   ./bin/rails db:migrate
+   ```
+
+## Examples
+
+Configure basic routing:
+
+```ruby
+# app/models/message.rb
+class ApplicationMailbox < ActionMailbox::Base
+  routing /^save@/i     => :forwards
+  routing /@replies\./i => :replies
+end
+```
+
+Then setup a mailbox:
+
+```ruby
+# app/mailboxes/forwards_mailbox.rb
+class ForwardsMailbox < ApplicationMailbox
+  # Callbacks specify prerequisites to processing
+  before_processing :require_forward
+
+  def process
+    if forwarder.buckets.one?
+      record_forward
+    else
+      stage_forward_and_request_more_details
+    end
+  end
+
+  private
+    def require_forward
+      unless message.forward?
+        # Use Action Mailers to bounce incoming emails back to sender – this halts processing
+        bounce_with Forwards::BounceMailer.missing_forward(
+          inbound_email, forwarder: forwarder
+        )
+      end
+    end
+
+    def forwarder
+      @forwarder ||= Person.where(email_address: mail.from)
+    end
+
+    def record_forward
+      forwarder.buckets.first.record \
+        Forward.new forwarder: forwarder, subject: message.subject, content: mail.content
+    end
+
+    def stage_forward_and_request_more_details
+      Forwards::RoutingMailer.choose_project(mail).deliver_now
+    end
+end
+```
+
+
+## Development road map
+
+Action Mailbox is destined for inclusion in Rails 6, which is due to be released some time in 2019. We will refine the framework in this separate rails/actionmailbox repository until we're ready to promote it via a pull request to rails/rails.
+
+## License
+
+Action Mailbox is released under the [MIT License](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).
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