Photo posting from mobile devices

[KT Walrus]

I'd like to see support added to attach photos (or other files) to a topic by having the user send the file as an email attachment to a mailbox (especially for the mobile skin). Basically, generate a unique email subaddress that associates the post to the attachment. This unique email subaddress would show in every post form (maybe only in the mobile skin) so the user could click on the link from their iPhone and bring up an email form to that address. The email subject line would be the photo caption and the user would attach one or more files to the message and send it.

Not all email servers support subaddressing, but the user would have to find a service that does (like gmail). In gmail, you just append a tag after a plus in the username part of an email address (e.g., kevin+post12442@gmail.com). The subaddress could be like a POST KEY so that it is hard/impossible to guess).


PHP has "Mail Related Extensions" which would allow IPB to access a mailbox (possibly on another server like gmail) and periodically check for new mail and fetch new messages with attachments. It would match the From address to get the user and then match the To address to determine which post to attach it to (verifying that the post is owned by the user). It would then extract the attachment and save it where it saves uploaded files and attach it to the post.

I suggest you implement it so that it can be used with some free email providers (like gmail), but also with other popular subaddressing email servers.

Anyway, my main desire is to be able to attach photos from my iPhone/iPad to my posts. Email attachments are the way to go for those devices (as long as I don't have to type in a long To address from my mobile device and can just click on an address link when using a mobile skin.