Featured Image handling

You would need to do the logic yourself by creating an addon. See https://postieplugin.com/extending/

I was just looking at the list of filters. Is there no specific handler for featured image? Seems gallery is the only image-related filter listed.

There isn’t one, but is a good idea. How would you see it working?

Possibility:
postie_add_attachment – fired for each attachment

Alternatively you could hook postie_post_after and figure out which attachment should be the featured image.

I think the most value would come in conditional handling.

I have control over the messages that get posted to my site (I also manage the listservs that populate it) so I’m on both sides of the I/O stream, others I’d imagine wouldn’t necessarily be able to predict order of image attachment or otherwise know specifics of which image is best as a feature. Seems like a job for machine learning doesn’t it? Humans can do this super easy, simple algorithm, not so much. Though still some criteria, such as image size would be a good indicator and probably would be right most of the time. Simpler solution may be to use the alt img attribute. For accessibility it would still need to be descriptive, but if you started with “Featured image – Image of white cow in snowstorm” the first part of the string could be parsed.

Can you name the featured image something consistent? The you can find it and make it the featured image during postie_post_after

Not exactly the same, at least not with the alt attribute. I work at a University so we are having to gear up our accessibility standards in anticipation of upcoming federal regs on the topic. So for example images have to have an accurate description in their alt=”” so that screen readers can describe the image to people with vision difficulites. Unfortunately Outlook doesn’t let you do “pure” html things so I couldn’t put in a pseudo class or anything like that either.

Oh wait. You meant the filename itself. I don’t think I could that either because we’re talking bout MS Outlook HTML emails, so the image is actually part of the message and has no given name. I believe WordPress numbers them sequentially after they get uploaded (or perhaps Outlook does it, not sure. It doesn’t let you peek behind the curtain really). If I attached an image to each email with a name that might work, but I have to think about my email audience too and that would be a bit weird for them I think.

Though now that I think about it, if I maintain that there is a standard Category specific image when there is no Post image, then if someone wanted an alternative to that post image, then and only then could they attach an image with some specific name and it would appear. So it would be an option for specific circumstances, which may work in my use case.

When Postie ingests an HTML email with embedded images, are they treated as attachments? I’m just trying to think this through. I suppose if I tell it to look for a specifically named attachment it won’t matter, but…

All images in emails are attachments. The only difference is whether they are displayed inline or not.
Typically the attachment name in the email matches the filename from your system.

I’m wondering just what became of this. All of my html emails for posting specify by url the images. Basically code like this:

      <p style="float: left"> <a title="Machete" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985694/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">
          <img longdesc="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985694/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" title="Machete"
            alt="Machete cover" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZWUxODc2NmItNThkNS00Mzc4LThlYTQtOTYwZjVhYjRiNmMwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg"></a>
      </p>
      <p align="justify">People are probably going to beat me up for this

It would be nice if right below my tags: I could have a featured: specifying a url.

@seasoned_geek What you are asking about is very different than the original poster. Please start your own thread.