What's the best way to fetch a POP3 server for new mails every 15 minutes?

Question

I'm developing an app that needs to fetch a POP3 account every 5-15 minutes to check for new email and process it. I have written all the code except for the part where it automatically runs every 5-15 minutes.

I'm using Sinatra, DataMapper and hosting on Heroku which means cron jobs are out of the question, because Heroku only provides hourly cron jobs at best.

I have looked into Delayed::Job which doesn't natively support Sinatra nor DataMapper but there are workarounds for both. Since my Ruby knowledge is limited I couldn't find a way to merge these two forks into one working Delayed::Job for Sinatra/DataMapper solution.

Initially I used Mailman to check for emails which has built-in polling and runs continuously, but since it's not Rack-based it doesn't run on Heroku.

Any pointers on where to go next? Before you say: a different webhost, I should add I really prefer to stick with Heroku because of its ease of use (except of course, for the above issue).

Answer 1

Heroku supports CloudMailin