[Phpwiki-talk] RFC: EmailNotification Syntax and Features

[Joe E. <jo...@or...>]

RFC: EmailNotification Syntax and Features

This is an email notification scheme I designed to cover my needs in my own
projects.  It may be that it is not appropriate to most people's uses or
tastes.  I'm posting the description here to gauge support and to solicit
improvements from people who require slightly different functionality.
Implementation details and questions are covered in another RFC called
"EmailNotification Coding Strategy".

SUMMARY

 - PlainEnglish email list syntax
 - notification about badge status as well as page changes
 - optional anti-spam measures
 - phpwiki/admin/notify.php can be run as a cron job to send emails
 - hopefully implemented & tested by Dec 1st.


THE  SYNTAX

The following wiki code:

    NotifyAboutChanges:

    * JoeEdelman
    * TheHumanResourcesDepartment
    * ji...@mi...

should do what you expect iff the page "TheHumanResourcesDepartment"
contains somewhere:

    GroupConsistsOf:

    * AlexHamilton
    * TomJefferson
    * ge...@ho...

and the "JoeEdelman", "AlexHamilton", and "TomJefferson" pages have an
'email' component in their page metadata.  Nevermind, for now, how it got
there.

These keywords-- "NotifyAboutChanges" and "GroupConsistsOf"-- must occur by
themselves in a paragraph, followed by a colon, and refer only to the
unnumbered list immediately following them.  You can, however, stack them.
For instance:

    NotifyAboutChanges:

    * ArnoldAwl
    * BurtBly
    * CarlCrow

    This is ordinary wiki text.

    NotifyAboutChanges:

    * DaveDrip
    * EddyEck

will email out to all five people when the page is changed.


MORE NEW SYNTAX

1.

That covers changes to a page, but I also need to be able to notify when a
page has a new Category or Badge-- for instance when someone adds "FixMe" or
"NeedsFinancialAssessment" to a page.  So we have:

    NotifyAboutLinks:

    * TheFinanceDepartmentDweebs

2.

And in certain cases I want to send notifications whenever a page has had a
certain Category or Badge for an amount of time-- for instance when "FixMe"
has been on a page for a week and no one has fixed it.  On the "FixMe" page:

    NotifyAboutLinks (older than 1 week):

    * JoeTheFixMeGuy

    NotifyAboutLinks (older than 1 month):

    * JoesBossJim