automated retrieval of account creation email

Question

I'm looking to test an account-creation feature of my product. The back-end of my application (which I do not control, so I can't intercept the sending of the email) sends an email to the address of my choice. I will need to then retrieve that email so that I can "click" on the activation link to complete the account creation. I'm using wdio and my tests are written in JavaScript, so JavaScript/node packages would be most convenient/appropriate. Any suggestions of services/packages to help with that?

Basically, I'm imagining this flow: In the account sign-up flow, I specify an email address of testaddress+unique@someservice.org. I then query the someservice.org until I get the account activation email that was addressed to testaddress+unique, retrieve the email, and parse it to extract the activation link.

Answer 1

It would depend on your email server (receiver). E.g., Protonmail and Gmail offer APIs that you can use to fetch received emails.

  // Proton Mail
  const pm = await ProtonMail.connect({
    username: 'foobar@protonmail.com',
    password: 'somethingsecure'
  })

  // Get emails in inbox
  const emailsInInbox = await pm.getEmails('inbox')

 // GMail
 GET https://www.googleapis.com/gmail/v1/users/me/messages?q=in:sent after:2014/01/01 before:2014/02/01