annoyer.py

Note: This program is still in its testing phase and will probably contain bugs.

This program sends reminder mails with an increasing frequency to remind people to do something. The E-Mail itself as well as the frequency are configurable for each mail separately. Please have a look into the example_mail.yml file.

Installation

You can clone the repository or just get the executable itself with:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanoschDeurer/annoyer.py/master/annoyer.py

annoyer.py uses the python3 smtplib module. It assumes that you have a running mail server on your computer.

Usage

Cronjob

The program is intended to be executed as a cronjob. A cronjob definition cold look as follows:

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
# m h  dom mon dow   command
30 * * * * /path/to/annoyer.py hourly
0 3 * * * /path/to/annoyer.py daily
0 4 * * 1 /path/to/annoyer.py weekly
0 5 1 * * /path/to/annoyer.py monthly

The concept is similar to the one used with rsnapshot. You can define arbitrary intervals by writing them in your crontab. The script then looks for a folder with mails for the given interval relative to the script location. Therefore for this example the directories /path/to/hourly , /path/to/daily ect. should exist.

Mail files

Mails are specified as YAML configuration files. Pleas take a look into the example_mail.yml file. The supported values are:

• recipients: single value or dictionary of recipients
• subject: string with mail subject
• mailtext: string with mailtext
• intervals: dictionary of intervals containing
  • <intervalname>: specifies name of the interval and contains
    • repetitions: how often the mail will be send in this interval. Set this to -1 for infinite repetions.
    • next_interval: interval the mail will be moved to after this interval is completed

Here is an example configuration for the intervals:

intervals:
  weekly:
    repetitions: 4
    next_interval: daily
  daily:
    repetitions: 7
    next_interval: hourly
  hourly:
    repetitions: -1

If you use this interval configuration and the above crotab the following will happen: your mail is send once a week for 4 weeks, then it is send once a day for 7 days, then it is send every hour until you remove the mail.