Post Notifications per E-Mail

tpokorra

Purpose of this extension

I wanted to get notified per e-mail, whenever someone posts to my forum, or if someone edits a post.

This is useful in the following situations:

As moderator, you are responsible for keeping the forum clean. But if the forum is not so busy, you would forget to visit the forum regularly and check for new and modified posts. But you might check your E-Mail every day, so you would notice a notification there.
We have a private forum for the volunteers of a charity. We don't want to exchange e-Mails directly, because someone easily forgets to add a new volunteer to BCC or CC, and we want a central history of conversation. That is why we use the forum. But some volunteers would not visit the forum at all. So we distribute every post with this extension to their e-mail address.

Installation

Install via composer:

composer require tpokorra/flarum-ext-post-notification

Don't forget to activate the extension in the admin panel of your Flarum, and use the Settings dialog to configure the extension with the E-Mail addresses!

This is the configuration screen:

Post Notification Configuration

Features

The administrator can define email addresses that will be in TO and BCC in the notification e-mail. Multiple addresses are separated by comma.
Sends notification email if someone starts a discussion, adds a new post to an existing discussion, or edits an existing post. You can define separate recipient lists for each situation.
It works now for approval as well: when the post gets saved initially, the moderators will be notified. After the post or discussion gets approved, the normal notifications will be sent.
Notification email contains the title of the post, the link to the post, and the text of the post.

Links for the curious

https://github.com/tpokorra/flarum-ext-post-notification
https://packagist.org/packages/tpokorra/flarum-ext-post-notification

sanwhere

tpokorra maybe you can add option to select, new discussion, or post. i would like to get some email notifications about new discussion titles for my forum.

nitaaikumar

tpokorra Can you please add a separate option to set email addresses for post revision/editing? I want to use it for a similar purpose as you but it will be too much for my members to receive emails even for post edits. So I can set only admin and mod emails for post edits whereas all interested members for new posts. Also do posts which go on approval also get sent, which will be good? Thanks so much.

Leanna

Very practical

FBI

Very useful, for some purposes 👍️

tpokorra

sanwhere nitaaikumar: Thank you for your feedback!

I have now implemented solutions for both your situations.
I hope the upgrade from previous versions of the extension will be smoothless.
Please let me know if you find any issues.

The latest version of the extension is now 0.3.4

nitaaikumar

tpokorra Oh thank so much. So quick and perfect. What is present behavior for posts going to the approval queue in your extension? Will post replies and first posts in a discussion which are not directly published but go in the approval queue also be sent to the emails set? That would be a problem because all the emails set won't be of admins, they may be of normal users too like you are using. I think best would be if you can make one more separate field for these two type of posts which go into approval queue and allow them to be sent to the emails set in the first two new discussions and new posts options only after they are approved? That would be so kind of you if you can add this too. Because the Subscribed Extension approval emails for new post replies were not coming when Follow Tags Extension was active so I had to disable Follow Tags. If you add this approval option too, then I can give the option to the users to use Follow Tags also and still get my approval emails so I can approve faster. Thanks so much in advance.

sanwhere

tpokorra perfect!

also i would love to choose which settings going to be available.
i needed to empty the fields if i don't want to use it.

tpokorra

You are welcome nitaaikumar! I like flarum, and I am thankful for all the work the core team provide, and I am happy if I can give something little back to the community.

I never thought about approval. I tested it now, and the notifications were never sent, neither when they were saved for the first time, nor after they got approved.
I have implemented both situations now: when approval is switched on, and the post gets saved, you can define moderator email addresses that will receive the notification. When the post/discussion gets approved, it works now with the default notification.

The latest version of the extension is now 0.3.5

Please let me know if you still find issues.

nitaaikumar

tpokorra Thanks so much again. I upgraded to 0.3.5. But still can't see the field in the settings were I can define the moderator email addresses which will receive the notification when a post or discussion goes for approval. They seem to be the same as before. Maybe I am missing something? Thanks.

tpokorra

nitaaikumar Perhaps you need to clear the cache?

php flarum cache:clear

Or do an F5 or Ctrl-F5 to reload the javascript in your browser?
I have updated the screenshot in the first post of this discussion, this setting for the approval notification is at the very top.

nitaaikumar

tpokorra Thanks I see it now after clearing cache. Now a user can't post. It gives that red box at the bottom and the following error in the javascript console. A user can post if I disable the extension though. I am using the Amazon php API and Amazon SES to send emails in the email settings. Maybe it is clashing?

VM43:1 POST https://myflarumsite.com/api/posts 500
(anonymous)	@	VM43:1
(anonymous)	@	mithril.js:2191
(anonymous)	@	mithril.js:2199
m.request	@	mithril.js:2288
e.request	@	Application.js:300
e.save	@	Model.js:160
n.onsubmit	@	ReplyComposer.js:82
n.onsubmit	@	TextEditor.js:182
L.t.<computed>	@	mithril.js:1286

;!function(){function e(t,e){return"function"!=typeof t||t.replaced?t:(e.replaced=!0,e)}var n,r,o,u=0;if("undefined"!=typeof CustomEvent&&"function"==typeof window.dispatchEvent){function s(t){try{if("object"==typeof t&&(t=JSON.stringify(t)),"string"==typeof t)return window.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent("lprequeststart",{detail:{data:t,requestID:++u}})),u}catch(t){}}function c(t){try{window.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent("lprequestend",{detail:t}))}catch(t){}}"undefined"!=typeof XMLHttpRequest&&XMLHttpRequest.prototype&&XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send&&(XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send=e(XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,(o=XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send,function(t){var e=this,n=s(t);return n&&e.addEventListener("loadend",function(){c({requestID:n,statusCode:e.status})}),o.apply(e,arguments)}))),"function"==typeof fetch&&(fetch=e(fetch,(r=fetch,function(t,e){var n=s(e),o=r.apply(this,arguments);if(n){function u(t){c({requestID:n,statusCode:t&&t.status})}o.then(u).catch(u)}return o})));function i(t){return e(t,function(){try{this.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent("lpsubmit"))}catch(t){}return t.apply(this,arguments)})}function t(){if(document&&document.forms&&0<document.forms.length)for(var t=0;t<document.forms.length;++t)document.forms[t].submit=i(document.forms[t].submit)}document&&"interactive"===document.readyState||"complete"===document.readyState?t():window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",t,!0),Document.prototype.createElement=e(Document.prototype.createElement,(n=Document.prototype.createElement,function(){var t=n.apply(this,arguments);return t&&"FORM"===t.nodeName&&t.submit&&(t.submit=i(t.submit)),t}))}}();

clarkwinkelmann

nitaaikumar there's a 500 error. Check your Flarum logs at <flarum>/storage/logs

tpokorra

@nitaaikumar I am using $this->mailer->raw() to send the emails. It works for me with the smtp driver.
I don't think I can work on SES support in my spare time. I am open to pull requests at https://github.com/tpokorra/flarum-ext-post-notification.

tpokorra

sanwhere I have removed the default values, and made the setting fields non-required. I hope this works for you.

Latest release is now 0.3.6

sanwhere

tpokorra perfect for me now! thank you man.

Littlegolden

After the plug-in email address is set, but cannot post discussions, and it will prompt "opps, an error occurred."
But can reply published discussions smoothly

tpokorra

@Littlegolden Can you give any error message from the log file, eg. storage/logs/flarum.log?
That would help me to reproduce the issue.

Littlegolden

tpokorra sorry, this ex works fine. It was my fault that wrote the wrong mail address.

Dany

Is it possible to specify a time (example 48h), which triggers an email after this time has elapsed with a reminder that there has been no reply to the post? This email should go to the moderators / admins.

tpokorra

Dany
That sounds like a good idea.

Would that only be for the first post of a discussion? Or do you need a reply for each post?

I wonder how to trigger that? Is there a cronjob in Flarum, or general event whenever a page is requested? Perhaps it would work if the discussion is read, that I listen to that event. The event would be: https://api.flarum.dev/php/v0.1.0-beta.10/Flarum/Discussion/Event/UserRead.html

Would you be able to prepare a Pull Request for https://github.com/tpokorra/flarum-ext-post-notification, or would you consider sponsoring this feature? I realized I cannot do such work for free anymore.