Mailer Contrib Package

A replacement for the core 'mailnotify' functionality. This module brings a new level of flexibility and ease of use to notifications.

Summary of Contents

bin/mailnotifier

The main part of the mailer module is a script, bin/mailnotifier. This script is designed to be run from 'cron' (or an equivalent offline job scheduler), and processes the contents of the standard WebNotify topic. As well as providing the usual notification service, it also provides per-topic notification services. The script may be run from the command line, a cron job, or from the browser.

The "new" format of WebNotify is a natural extension of the existing format. In the old format, subscribers are listed in "bullet lists" following one of the following formats:

three spaces * [ webname . ] wikiName - SMTP mail address
three spaces * [ webName . ] wikiName

The second format uses the home topic of the user to recover their mail address. This format is extended to accept the following syntaxes:

three spaces * SMTP mail address
three spaces * SMTP mail address : topics
three spaces * [ webname . ] wikiName : topics

where topics is a space-separated list of topic names.

• Specify topics without a Web. prefix
• Topics must exist in this web.
• Topics may be specified using * wildcards
• Each topic may optionally be followed by an integer in parentheses, indicating the depth of the tree of children below that topic. Changes in all these children will be detected and reported along with changes to the topic itself. Note This uses the TWiki "Topic parent" feature.
• Each topic may optionally be preceded by a '+' or '-' sign. The '+' sign means "subscribe to this topic" (the same as not putting anything). The '-' sign means "don't send notifications regarding this topic". This allows users to elect to filter out changes to certain topics (and their children, to an arbitrary depth). Topic filters ('-') take precedence over topic includes ('+').

For example:

   * daisy@flowers.com
   * daisy@flowers.com: Web*
   * DaisyCutter: Petal* (1) WeedKillers (3) Red*Phlox
    * StarTrekFan: * - *Wars - *sInTheirEyes - *shipTroopers

A user may be listed many times in the WebNotify topic. Where a user has several lines in WebNotify that all match the same topic, they will only be notified of changes to that topic once.

If a TWiki group is listed for notification, the group will be recursively expanded to the email addresses of all members.

In the future it is intended that individual users will be able to control the frequency with which they are notified of topic changes, by changing a schedule specification in their home topic. However at present, the notification schedule is controlled by the frequency of activation of the cron job that runs the bin/mailnotifier script.

Note the mailnotifier ignores permissions in webs. It is entirely possible for a user to get added to a WebNotify topic in a web, when they are not authorised to view the topics in that web. This could result in them having limited access to sensitive information (the topic summaries).

TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib code library

The second part of the module is a code library that provides the services for other applications to modify WebNotify through a clean, well documented interface. This allows (for example) plugin developers to add a "Register me for notification" button to their pages. The main interface is the WebNotify package described below.

bin/remove_obsolete_locks

The old mailnotify script had a side-effect; it would remove obsolete topic locks as it ran. This has not been implemented in mailnotifier. Instead, a separate side script is provided in this module that performs this function, called bin/remove_obsolete_locks. For full compatibility with =mailnotify this script should be run (from bin) on the same schedule as mailnotifier.

Detailed Documentation

The bin/mailnotifier is used from the command line as follows:

Usage: bin/mailnotifier [-q] [-m] [ web1 web2 ... webN ]

-q Don't print progress information -m Send mail. Default behaviour is to print out plain text of mails that would be sent to STDOUT web1 web2 ... webN List of webs to process, separated by spaces or commas. Default is to process all legal TWiki webs. Wildcards (*) are supported.

from the browser the following CGI parameters are supported:

verbose set to 0 to get the same effect as -q sendmail Set to 1 to actually send mail webs Space or comma-separated list of webs to process

The following POD documentation is provided for the use of developers only. Everyone else can just ignore it. The main class is TWiki::Contrib::MailContrib::WebNotify, which allows you to load a notify topic and manipulate the entries. The other classes support this main class. TWiki::Contrib::Mailer is the implementation of bin/mailnotifier. package TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::WebNotify Object that represents the contents of a WebNotify topic in a TWiki web sub new($web) Create a new object by parsing the content of the webnotify topic in the given web. This is the normal way to load a WebNotify topic. If the topic does not exist, it will create an empty object. sub writeWebNotify() Write the object to the WebNotify topic it was read from. If there is a problem writing the topic (e.g. it is locked), the method will return an error message. If everything is ok it will return undef. sub getSubscriber($name, $noAdd) $name Name of subscriber (wikiname with no web or email address) $noAdd If false or undef, a new subscriber will be created for this name Get a subscriber from the list of subscribers, and return a reference to the Subscriber object. If $noAdd is true, and the subscriber is not found, undef will be returned. Otherwise a new Subscriber object will be added if necessary. sub getSubscribers() Get a list of all subscriber names (unsorted) sub subscribe($name, $topics, $depth) $name Name of subscriber (wikiname with no web or email address) $topics wildcard expression giving topics to subscribe to $depth Child depth to scan (default 0) Add a subscription, adding the subscriber if necessary. sub unsubscribe($name, $topics, $depth) $name Name of subscriber (wikiname with no web or email address) $topics wildcard expression giving topics to subscribe to $depth Child depth to scan (default 0) Add an unsubscription, adding the subscriber if necessary. An unsubscription is a specific request to ignore notifications for a topic for this particular subscriber. sub toString() -> string Return a string representation of this object, in WebNotify format. sub processChange($change, $db, $changeSet, $seenSet) $change ref of a TWiki::Contrib::Mailer::Change $db TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::UpData database of parent references $changeSet ref of a hash mapping emails to sets of changes $seenSet ref of a hash recording indices of topics already seen Find all subscribers that are interested in the given change, and add their email expansions to the changeset with pointers to the change. Only the most recent change listed in the .changes file is retained. This method does not change this object. sub isEmpty() -> boolean Return true if there are no subscribers package TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::Subscriber Object that represents a subscriber to notification. A subscriber is a name (which may be a wikiName or an email address) and a list of subscriptions which describe the topis subscribed to, and unsubscriptions representing topics they are specifically not interested in. The subscriber name may also be a group, so it may expand to many email addresses. sub new($name) $name Wikiname, with no web, or email address, of user targeted for notification Create a new user. sub getEmailAddresses() -> list Get a list of email addresses for the user(s) represented by this subscription sub subscribe($subs) $subs Subscription object Add a new subscription to this subscriber object. The subscription will always be added, even if there is a wildcard overlap with an existing subscription. sub unsubscribe($subs) $subs Subscription object Add a new unsubscription to this subscriber object. The unsubscription will always be added, even if there is a wildcard overlap with an existing subscription or unsubscription. An unsubscription is a statement of the subscribers desire not to be notified of changes to this topic. sub isSubscribedTo($topic) -> boolean $topic Topic object we are checking $db TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::UpData database of parents Check if we have a subscription to the given topic. sub isUnsubscribedFrom($topic) -> boolean $topic Topic object we are checking $db TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::UpData database of parents Check if we have an unsubscription from the given topic. sub toString() -> string Return a string representation of this object, in WebNotify format. package TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::Subscription Object that represents a single subscription of a user to notification on a page. A subscription is expressed as a page spec (which may contain wildcards) and a depth of children of matching pages that the user is subscribed to. sub new($pages, $childDepth) $pages Wildcarded expression matching subscribed pages $childDepth Depth of children of $topic to notify changes for. Defaults to 0 Create a new subscription. sub toString() -> string Return a string representation of this object, in WebNotify format. sub matches($topic, $db, $depth) -> boolean $topic Topic object we are checking $db TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::UpData database of parent names $depth If non-zero, check if the parent of the given topic matches as well. undef = 0. Check if we match this topic. Recurses up the parenthood tree seeing if this is a child of a parent that matches within the depth range. package TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::Change Object that represents a change to a topic. sub new($web) $web Web name $topic Topic name $author String author of change $time String time of change $rev String revision identifier $summary String summary of the change Construct a new change object. sub expandHTML($html) -> string $html Template to expand keys within Expand an HTML template using the values in this change. The following keys are expanded: %TOPICNAME%, %AUTHOR%, %TIME%, %REVISION%, %TEXTHEAD%. Returns the expanded template. sub expandPlain() -> string Generate a plaintext version of this change. package TWiki::Contrib::MailerContrib::UpData Object that lazy-scans topics to extract parent relationships. sub new($web) $web Web we are building parent relationships for Constructor for a web; initially empty, will lazy-load as topics are referenced. sub getParent($topic) -> string Get the name of the parent topic of the given topic SMELL: Huge assumption about topic files containing meta-data!! This should really do a Search, but there is no published API. package TWiki::Contrib::Mailer Package of support for extended WebNotify notification, supporting per-topic notification and notification of changes to children. Also supported is a simple API that can be used to change the WebNotify topic from other code. sub mailNotify($sendmail) $sendmail If true, will send mails. If false, will print to STDOUT Process the WebNotify topics in each web and generate and issue notification mails. Designed to be invoked from the command line; should only be called by mailnotify scripts.

Settings

• One line description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Enhanced e-mail notification with per topic notification

• Name of the perl package
  • Set STUB = TWiki::Contrib::Mailer

Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this contrib package. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the package on the server where TWiki is running.

• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unzip MailerContrib.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

File: Description: lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/WebNotify.pm   lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/Subscriber.pm   lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/Subscription.pm   lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/Change.pm   lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/UpData.pm   lib/TWiki/Contrib/MailerContrib/build.pl   lib/TWiki/Contrib/Mailer.pm   data/TWiki/MailerContrib.txt   bin/mailnotifier   bin/remove_obsolete_locks   MailerContrib_installer.pl

• Run the installer script MailContrib_intaller.pl or alternatively resolve all dependencies manually.
• To make sure the installation was successful, run the bin/mailnotifier script from the command line, with no parameters. In this case it will print out what it would have done to STDOUT.
• Set up cron (or equivalent) jobs to run mailnotifier and remove_obsolete_locks.
• Manually modify your WebChangesAlert topic: Replace the part between the STARTINCLUDE and the STOPINCLUDE with the following help text:

__Format:__ TWiki handles entries in bullet list (=<space><space><space>*=) format containing the %TWIKIWEB%.WikiName of a user; a !WikiName with e-mail address; an e-mail address only; or a [[%MAINWEB%.TWikiGroups][TWikiGroup]]. Each of these may be followed by a colon and a comma separated list of topics, indicating what to subscribe to. Examples with explanation: * =%MAINWEB%.FredBloggs -->= send to e-mail address specified in user's home page * =not.user@work.com -->= send to user not registered in TWiki * =%MAINWEB%.EngineeringGroup -->= send to all members of a group * =%MAINWEB%.FredBloggs - !secondary@home.com -->= send to an alternative e-mail address * =%MAINWEB%.FredBloggs: !InterestingStuff, !MeetingMinutes*, !IssueTracker (2)= %BR% =-->= get notified of changes to specific topics only. Wildcards * may be used. The integer in parenthesis indicates the depth of the tree of children below that topic; changes in all these children will be detected and reported along with changes to the topic itself. Only children based on the topic parent feature are considered.

Contrib Info

Author: TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie (http://c-dot.co.uk) Copyright ©: 2004, Wind River Systems License: GPL (GNU General Public License) Dependencies: CPAN:URI::Escape CPAN:MIME::Base64 Version: 1.004 Change History:   12 October 2004 1.004 Added support for anti-subscriptions. Doc fixes from TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny. Bug fixes to permissions code. Back-off and retry if the mailer can't be reached (should really be in Net::sendEmail) 6 October 2004 1.003 Excluded _ webs from processing, added bin/remove_obsolete_locks for full reverse-compatibility 1 October 2004 1.002 PeterThoeny provided additional documentation 27 September 2004 1.001 runnable as CGI script, minor bugfixes, removed dependency on DBCacheContrib 8 September 2004 1.000 Initial version Home: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/MailerContrib Feedback: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/MailerContribDev Appraisal: http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/MailerContribAppraisal

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences

-- TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie - 12:25:00 12 October 2004