This is dreamcode for the Hoodie (http://hood.ie) Email worker, doing the backend magic behind hoodie.email.send( options ). I'm not a Node person, just dreaming out loud ;-)

01_hoodie-email-worker.dreamcode.js

function Worker(app) {
    this.app = app;

    app.on('add:$email', this.sendEmail.bind(this) );
}

Worker.prototype.sendEmail = function(email) {

    // check if email has been configured
    var emailConfig = app.config.get("email")
    if (! emailConfig) {
        email.$error = "Email has not yet been configured for " app.name;
        this.app.save(email);

        return
    }

    // validate
    var error = this.validate(email)
    if(error) {
        this.app.warn( error );

        email.$error = error;
        this.app.save(email);

        return
    }

    // there should be an app wide method to send emails
    this.app.sendEmail( email, emailConfig, function(error) {
        if (error) {
            email.$error = error;
            this.app.save(email);

            return;
        }

        email.sentAt = new Date()
        this.app.remove( email )
    }.bind(this) ))
};

Worker.prototype.validate = function(email) {
    // do some validation, return error if there is one,
    // return nothing if we're good

    return
};


module.exports = function (app) {
    return new Worker(app);
};

02_email_new.json

{
    "to": "joe@example.com",
    "subject": "Hello, world!",
    "text": "Bla bla bla"
}

03_email_sent.json

{
    "to": "joe@example3.com",
    "subject": "Hello, world!",
    "text": "Bla bla bla",
    "sentAt": "2013-01-01T20:00:00",
    "_deleted": true
}

04_email_error.json

{
    "to": "joe@example3.com",
    "subject": "Hello, world!",
    "text": "Bla bla bla",
    "$error": "Email could not be sent"
}