Email Address Generator

An add-on for generating unique email aliases for a domain with a catch-all email address set-up.

The format

The email addresses are generated in the following format:

<site-identifier>.<encoded-timestamp><format-version>@<email-domain>

Components

1. Site identifier:

   • Derived from the hostname of the current site
   • Dots are replaced with hyphens
   • The www. prefix is removed
   • Example: https://www.mail.google.com → mail-google-com

2. Encoded timestamp:

   • Represents the time the email address was generated in seconds since May 1st, 2024 00:00 UTC

   • The value is encoded into a string using this alphabet abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_

     const ALPHABET = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_";
     
     function encodeTimestamp(num) {
         let encoded = "";
     
         while (num > 0) {
             encoded = ALPHABET[num % ALPHABET.length] + encoded;
             num = Math.floor(num / ALPHABET.length);
         }
     
         return encoded;
     }
     
     function decodeTimestamp(encoded) {
         let decoded = 0;
     
         for (let i = 0; i < encoded.length; i++) {
             let charIndex = ALPHABET.indexOf(encoded[i]);
             decoded = decoded * ALPHABET.length + charIndex;
         }
     
         return decoded;
     }

3. Format version identifier:

   • Current value: a
   • Subject to change in the future (allows future extensions to the format)

4. Email domain

   • Your email domain
   • Set in the extension's options page

Example of an email address: mail-google-com.d2l8da@example.com

The code for generating addresses can be found here (in the generate-address.js file).