Mailaliaser

A Ruby gem for generating unique email aliases with timestamp-based suffixes. Perfect for testing, temporary accounts, service sign-ups, or organizing email workflows with automatically generated unique variations.

• Unique Generation: Creates email aliases with timestamp-based suffixes to ensure uniqueness
• Flexible Configuration: Customize local parts, domains, and number of emails generated
• CLI & Library: Use from command line or integrate into your Ruby applications
• Clipboard Integration: Optionally copy generated emails to system clipboard (graceful fallback if unavailable)
• Cross-Platform: Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows
• Multiple Output Formats: Single email or semicolon-separated list for multiple emails

gem install mailaliaser

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'mailaliaser'

And then execute:

bundle install

For clipboard functionality, install system dependencies:

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install xsel
# or for Wayland
sudo apt-get install wl-clipboard

macOS:

# Clipboard support included by default

Windows:

# Clipboard support included by default

# Generate a single email alias
mailaliaser -l myname -d example.com
# Output: myname+1640995200001@example.com

# Generate multiple aliases
mailaliaser -l user -d test.org -n 5
# Output: user+1640995200001@test.org;user+1640995200002@test.org;...

# Generate 3 aliases for testing
mailaliaser -l testuser -d myapp.com -n 3

# Generate without clipboard (useful in CI/scripts)
mailaliaser -l api -d service.com --no-clipboard

# Generate quietly (only copy to clipboard)
mailaliaser -l silent -d example.org -q

# Generate for multiple services
mailaliaser -l newsletter -d news.com -n 10

require 'mailaliaser'

# Generate a single email
generator = Mailaliaser::Generator.new(
  local_part: 'user',
  domain: 'example.com'
)

email = generator.generate
puts email
# => "user+1640995200001@example.com"

# Generate multiple emails with custom options
generator = Mailaliaser::Generator.new(
  local_part: 'service',
  domain: 'myapp.com',
  number: 5,
  clipboard: false,  # Don't copy to clipboard
  quiet: true        # Don't output to stdout
)

emails = generator.generate
# Returns array of 5 unique email addresses

# Testing scenarios
RSpec.describe 'User Registration' do
  let(:test_email) do
    Mailaliaser::Generator.new(
      local_part: 'test',
      domain: 'example.com',
      clipboard: false,
      quiet: true
    ).generate
  end

  it 'creates user with unique email' do
    user = User.create(email: test_email)
    expect(user).to be_valid
  end
end

# Service integrations
class NewsletterSignup
  def self.generate_test_email
    Mailaliaser::Generator.new(
      local_part: 'newsletter-test',
      domain: ENV['TEST_DOMAIN'],
      quiet: true
    ).generate
  end
end

• Software Testing: Generate unique email addresses for test scenarios
• Service Sign-ups: Create temporary emails for service registrations
• Email Organization: Generate tagged emails for different purposes
• Load Testing: Create multiple unique email addresses for performance testing
• Development: Generate test data with guaranteed unique email addresses
• CI/CD Pipelines: Automated testing with unique email generation

• Single email: Returns the email address directly
• Multiple emails: Returns semicolon-separated list for easy parsing

# Single email
"user+1640995200001@example.com"

# Multiple emails  
"user+1640995200001@example.com;user+1640995200002@example.com;user+1640995200003@example.com"

• Ruby >= 2.7
• Optional: System clipboard utilities (xsel, wl-clipboard, or built-in on macOS/Windows)

After checking out the repo, run:

# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Run tests
bundle exec rake spec

# Run linting
bundle exec rake rubocop

# Run all checks (linting + tests)
bundle exec rake

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Make your changes
4. Add tests for new functionality
5. Ensure all tests pass (bundle exec rake)
6. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add amazing feature')
7. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
8. Open a Pull Request

This project uses RuboCop for code style enforcement. Please ensure your code follows the established conventions by running:

bundle exec rake rubocop

This gem follows Semantic Versioning. For available versions, see the releases page.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Documentation: This README and inline code documentation
• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md

Made with ❤️ for the Ruby community