Invoke Lambda function action

The Lambda action calls your code through a Lambda function and, optionally, notifies you through Amazon SNS. This action has the following options and requirements.

Writing your Lambda function

To process your email, your Lambda function can be invoked asynchronously (that is, using the Event invocation type). The event object passed to your Lambda function will contain metadata pertaining to the inbound email event. You can also use the metadata to access the message content from your Amazon S3 bucket.

If you want to actually control the mail flow, your Lambda function must be invoked synchronously (that is, using the RequestResponse invocation type) and your Lambda function must call the callback method with two arguments: the first argument is null, and the second argument is a disposition property that is set to either STOP_RULE, STOP_RULE_SET, or CONTINUE. If the second argument is null or does not have a valid disposition property, the mail flow continues and further actions and rules are processed, which is the same as with CONTINUE.

For example, you can stop the receipt rule set by writing the following line at the end of your Lambda function code:

callback( null, { "disposition" : "STOP_RULE_SET" });

For AWS Lambda code samples, see Lambda function examples. For examples of high-level use cases, see Use case examples.

Input format

Amazon SES passes information to the Lambda function in JSON format. The top-level object contains a Records array, which is populated with properties eventSource, eventVersion, and ses. The ses object contains receipt and mail objects, which are in exactly the same format as in the Amazon SNS notifications described in Notification contents.

The data that Amazon SES passes to Lambda includes metadata about the message, as well as several email headers. However, it doesn't contain the body of the message.

The following is a high-level view of the structure of the input that Amazon SES provides to the Lambda function.

{
   "Records": [
      {
        "eventSource": "aws:ses",
        "eventVersion": "1.0",
        "ses": {
           "receipt": {
               <same contents as SNS notification>
            },
           "mail": {
               <same contents as SNS notification>
           }
         }
     }
   ]
}

Return values

Your Lambda function can control mail flow by returning one of the following values: