Module ProcessEmailToPage

[Pete]

Hi all

This module was sponsored by Jason as per this topic: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3566-email-image-module-development/

It's quite similar to horst & ryan's EmailImage module, but supports multiple email addresses for sending emails to different parts of your site, also allowing you to select different templates. There is also a delimiter option whereby you can split up the email's content and have text appear in the body or sidebar etc.

Here's a video to show you what I mean.

The video may well be of interest to other module authors as I used some Ajax to push what can normally be done in the module config - hope you like it

There was the temptation to build on the EmailImage module with this one, but I already had code for my Helpdesk module (work in progress) that parsed emails using Flourishlib and wanted to use that code instead for this one.

EDIT: Also worth noting is that unlike the EmailImage module, this doesn't come with a pre-built gallery template for the front-end. This is intentional as you could pipe emails into any part of a site you like, so I couldn't make assumptions as to usage of the content.

You can download it via the modules directory.

[ryan]

Pete this is incredibly well done and beautifully put together–nice job! 

[apeisa]

Pete, this looks fantastic (just watched the video).

Few questions popped on my mind while watching: why is parent page called category on module settings page? "Images" field name seems to be hardcoded? Does (or will it) support other attachments than images?

Again, brilliant work. Thanks Pete & Jason.

[Pete]

Thanks ryan!

And thanks again to Jason for letting my run with some ideas. I could just as easily completed this by making the admin enter comma separated values in a textarea field (the easy way to go) but I wanted to make input foolproof and the idea was already in my head.

And now some techy stuff:

I had some fun working out the ajax behind adding new rows and settling on saving the field data as a JSON string in the end (which is fine because nobody is going to set up dozens of email accounts!) but if there are any suggestions for improvement there then please let me know as it seems to me now that there are endless possibilities for "add another row" type setups in module configuration.

Before that I was trying to overcomplicate things and have the new rows save in the background as an array, but if I intercepted the page save, ran the ajax request and then use jQuery to finish submitting the form then it wouldn't save the other form data. I abandoned that idea completely (but left the function in the module file for reference). In the end, keeping it simple worked out better as running ajax upon saving the config page slowed the page save process down as it essentially sent two requests - converting the data to a json string and saving to a hidden field is instantaneous by comparison

To those not following all that, my eventual solution was to KISS

[Pete]

Antti - to answer your questions:

1. This grated on me every time I wrote the word "category" and I should probably just change it to "parent page" as that's more in keeping with ProcessWire's terminology (to newcomers "Category" makes sense, but PW is all about enticing people to learn new things after all ). I'll change this in the next update.
2. It is hardcoded to the images field for now. I realise this is a bit of a gamble that they haven't renamed/deleted this field, so should probably add an extra config option for this. The reason I didn't for now is that it then led me to thinking (as you have) about other file types and then I thought about allowing different fields for different templates and started to get a headache I should at least do the first part and allow the admin to select a different field, plus add more checks for attachment filetypes.

As a result of those two points, the next version really needs:

• Rename "category" to "parent page" throughout
• Allow admin to select image field
• Add more checks for filetypes attached to emails
• Add field for whitelist of email addresses
• Maybe allow for other attachments (why not? It's simple enough )

Not sure when I might get around to these as there may be other stuff in the pipeline before then

[Jason]

Glad you guys like it, Pete did a phenomenal job and was great to work with. More modules to follow soon, standby!

[fenton]

thanks for the module Jason & Pete!

I got a problem running the cron job via module hash though:

Error:     Exception: There was an error connecting to the server (in /[...]/site/modules/ProcessEmailToPage/flourishlib/fMailbox.php
line 981)

#0 /[...]/site/modules/ProcessEmailToPage/flourishlib/fMailbox.php(1227): fMailbox->connect()

#1 /[...]/site/modules/ProcessEmailToPage/ProcessEmailToPage.module(265): fMailbox->listMessages()

#2 /[...]/wire/core/Wire.php(293): ProcessEmailToPage->importFromEmail(Object(HookEvent))

#3 /[...]/wire/core/Wire.php(229): Wire->runHooks('render', Array)

#4 /[...]/wire/modules/Process/ProcessPageView.module(97): Wire->__call('render', Array)

#5 /[...]/wire/modules/Process/ProcessPageView.module(97): Page->render()

#6 [internal function]: Pro
 

... guess the email/host settings aren't right

the email account is set up for the same domain the actual website is on.

any ideas what I could have missed?

thanks a lot, cheers

[Pete]

I'd probably need to see your configuration for the module, as well as exactly what you've put as the link in CRON - you can PM me a screenshot of the config if you like.

[fenton]

thanks Pete, will do

[alan]

Thanks for this amazing Module Pete!

I have a site but don't have an email server/service running on the domain where a site is.

Am I being thick by assuming I can setup say a Gmail address and use the IMAP or POP instructions for accessing that Gmail in your Modules fields and it should work, or am I missing something basic (I've assumed the fields Password, Type, Host, Port Number mean the Module is going to go and read emails from an email server, such as Gmail)?

I went with the above assumptions but got errors but rather than bore you with detail I thought I'd ask the above first.

Thanks in advance for any comments

[Pete]

Hi Alan

It should work with a Gmail account, though I've not tried yet - all mine have rather too much mail in to give it a go without consuming vast amounts of server memory

[alan]

I *know* what you're saying there Pete about Gmail!

Good to know it should work.

One question before I go back and try again, does the Module look for unread Emails, act on those, mark them as read and hence not post the same thing twice on successive cron runs, or is there some other mechanism that manages this?

[Pete]

It will read in anything from the mailbox and delete the emails once it's done, so be careful with that!

[alan]

Excellent, understood, thanks Pete!

[Jason]

I can confirm that it does work with Gmail. Configuring Gmail took a tad more tinkering than my POP3 account. I think this was the information I used a couple months back when checking it out -

Incoming Mail (POP3) Server - requires SSL: pop.gmail.com
Use SSL: Yes
Port: 995

[alan]

Hmm. I am not getting IMAP or POP to work, with POP I am getting when I run the CRON

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator to inform of the time the error occurred and of anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log. 

I *think* it may be that the webserver in question has no email access or server (so I think for instance that the usual ports for POP are closed in the firewall).

Maybe this means I just can't use this Module (sad).

[BrendonKoz]

Pete, have you tried (or had any problems) with Flourish incorrectly converting non-standard ASCII characters in your emails? I was enjoying their Mailbox classes for something else up until I had this problem, then checked their GitHub issues page and was a lot more skeptical. I'll be checking out Zend's classes now to see if it works any better, but was curious with your own results in using this.

Dealing with mail and all the different variations on what should be a strict format is kind of a pain.

== EDIT ==

Nevermind. I just noticed that in my super-quick test page to see how Flourish would work I did not set up the proper PHP settings for UTF-8 rendering (header and meta). It would be worth noting that a site (or page) layout using the Flourish library must be rendered in UTF-8 due to how it was developed. I feel silly, but am glad that I was mistaken. I may still look at Zend, but only if Flourish doesn't handle all of my use-cases properly.

[Pete]

Brendon - was going to say I hadn't noticed any issues but glad it's not an issue anyway.

When testing I'd used webmail like Gmail, as well as self-hosted webmail RoundCube and finally Outlook. I've not tried every combination of email program though as there are too many variations as you say.

In an ideal world, someone would invent "Email 2.0" to fix non-standard formats and banish spam forever somehow, but until then we're stuck with non-standard programs all doing slightly different things

[davo]

Hi

I've been installing this great module, and it does appear to be mostly working; except for an issue.

The subject line parses ok and forms the title of the new page, but anything after that doesn't seem to process. I've tried just general text and using the delimiter ==blog==, but anything other than the title doesn't seem to appear in the new pages?

[Pete]

Can you post an example of the body of the email please?

Theoretically, if you have a field called "blog" then anything in the email before ==blog== will be posted to the "body" field, and anything after ==blog== to the blog field.

[davo]

Cheers Pete

It looks like this:

Subject:   Title goes in this field From:   ###@####web.com Date:   Sun, October 20, 2013 12:24 am To:   ###@####web.com Priority:   Normal
Options: 

body goes in this field==blog==blog text goes in this field

and yet, every time, the title get successfully posted into the new page but anything else just seems to get ignored

[Pete]

As long as there are fields called "body" and "blog" in the template these posts are being sent to I'm not sure what the issue might be. Does it definitely use the right template when creating the pages?

Does it do anything if you remove the ==blog== delimiter? Theoretically that should post all content to the body field.

[davo]

Yes, I've tried it without ==blog== written in also hoping it would just write the the body field but nothing. It's very odd, it successfully brings the title across. And as the title is coming across it would make sense that the connection to the mail server is successful. The mail server is on a separate box but connection appears to succeed.

I did have the module stored in the root of the modules directory, but since then I've uninstalled the module, moved the files to /site/modules/ProcessEmailToPage and reinstalled.

Is there anything else I can try as I really like the idea of the module.

[martind]

thanks for the module Jason & Pete!

I got a problem running the cron job via module hash though:

Error:     Exception: There was an error connecting to the server (in /[...]/site/modules/ProcessEmailToPage/flourishlib/fMailbox.php
line 981)
...
 

...

fenton, what was the problem in your case. Have the same here.

greetings,

martin

[martind]

fenton, what was the problem in your case. Have the same here.

greetings,

martin

got ist. secure wasn`t recognised, changed port to 143 and works fine.