Developers come up with open source API for accessing Gmail and Exchange
Developers released an open source API on Monday to create their own mail client, which can use existing services such as Gmail and Microsoft Exchange. In this way they want more influence on the functionalities of a client.
Former Dropbox and MIT employees released the json API on Monday under the name Inbox, which is also the name of their start-up. The so-called Inbox Rest API allows developers to continue to use services such as Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, while they can design the mail client themselves. In this way, they can, for example, add or omit functionalities, such as labels and the possibility to access attachments, in order to offer a user experience that is more suitable for the application in question.
Inbox is similar to Gmail API, which Google recently announced at its Google I/O event. This makes it possible, among other things, to access messages, threads and labels from Gmail without first getting full access to the inbox. According to the Inbox developers, the only drawback is that it is a closed platform, while Inbox is open source.
One of the initiators, former Dropbox developer Michael Grinich, told TechCrunch that the purpose of Inbox is twofold. First, he said he experienced how difficult it is to add features to mail applications, because, for example, IMAP, MIME and character encodings have to be taken into account. Inbox takes that work off the hands of developers, Grinich explains.
Second, Inbox should provide the infrastructure that all email services will later use, Grinich wishes. “The sync engine is freely available on GitHub and we invite you to discuss and submit requests for it.” The engine currently only supports Gmail and Yahoo, but more IMAP providers will follow soon, according to the developers. In addition, Microsoft Exchange, with ActiveSync support, is now in a closed beta program.
To illustrate, the start-up has released a number of demos using the Inbox SDK for JavaScript or iOS. This means that the api can already be accessed for obtaining, modifying and sending e-mail. It is also possible to create filters, access attachments and create drafts. Finally, the program can also be used without having to use external services such as Gmail. For the time being, the program can only be used on its own server, but a SaaS variant will follow shortly. A beta program is already underway for this.