Issue

I just recently got WebNotify going and found it a little strange that a mail notification of changes over the last 24 hours should say in a message dated 08:00 on 04 Oct 2002:

Topics in TWiki.PA that changed since 02 Oct 2002 - 14:27 GMT:
  ...

ie it was going back to the 24-hours notified in the previous email at 08:00 on 03 Oct, covering the period of 08:00 02 Oct to 08:00 03 Oct!

A more easily-understood - and cleaner - email would have said in the notification of 03 Oct:

Topics in TWiki.PA that have changed since 02 Oct 2002 - 0800 GMT:

<list of changes>

The last update to files in the PA web took place at 14:27 GMT 02 Oct 2002.

Exactly the same information as in the current implementation would have been communicated to users, but within the correct 24 hour time period.

Suggested changes

• The .mailnotify file should store the last date/time that a notification run was performed ie 08:00 03 Oct 2002 in the above example, rather than the last topic modification date prior to the current run and should be made available to the mailnotify template as variable %LASTDATE%

• The date/time of the last modified file within the current 24-hour period (ie the final value of $currLastmodify) should be made available as variable %LASTUPDATE%

This will require some minor changes to the rest of the script.

-- RichardLewis - 07 Oct 2002

Done! Now implemented on my version of mailnotify with a corresponding change to mailnotify.tmpl.

The diff file for mailnotify is:

89a90,91
> # Richard Lewis addition:
>     my $currTime = time();
100c102,103
<               if( $prevLastmodify eq $bar[2] ) {
---
> # Richard Lewis change: eq to ge
>               if( $prevLastmodify ge $bar[2] ) {
167a171,172
> # Richard Lewis addition:
>     $text =~ s/%LASTUPDATE%/&TWiki::formatGmTime($currLastmodify)/geo;
183c188,189
<         &TWiki::Store::saveFile( "$dataDir/$webName/.mailnotify", $currLastmodify );
---
> # Richard Lewis change: $currLastmodify to $currTime
>         &TWiki::Store::saveFile( "$dataDir/$webName/.mailnotify", $currTime );

mailnotify.tmpl now contains the lines:

Topics in %WIKITOOLNAME%.%WEB% that have changed since %LASTDATE% GMT:
%TOPICLIST%

The most recent change was on %LASTUPDATE% GMT.

Review recent changes in:
  %SCRIPTURL%/view%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/WebChanges

-- RichardLewis - 07 Oct 2002

Did this go in?

-- MartinCleaver - 31 Mar 2004

Nope, it didn't. It is a good idea though, and the changes are pretty simple. Because there's no patch file attached I can't commit to taking care of this one just yet, so I'm marking it as PatchAdjustmentRequired in case someone gets the itch to update it and attach a CVS diff. If not, I'll move it to PatchReadyForCVS as soon as I can be sure I'll have time to take care of it promptly.

-- WalterMundt - 20 Apr 2004