ckanext-reminder

This extension has two main functions.

1. The extension provides simple email notifications for datasets which have a set data-expiry date. The extension relies on a daily cronjob during which datasets are checked if the reminder-data is set to current date. The email sending process is not retried in any way and the emails will not be sent if the cronjob fails to run for some reason.

2. The extension provides a subscription form snippet which can be added to dataset templates. Users can submit their email address and receive notifications of these specific datasets when they are updated. The user can unsubscribe from any datasets by clicking the link located at the bottom of the email.

Requirements

This extension is developed and tested with CKAN version 2.5.2 but versions starting from 2.2 should work fine. This extension also needs Bootstrap 3+ for styling to work properly. Bootstrap 2 should mainly be fine, but styles might be a bit off at least with the subscription_form template.

Installation

To install ckanext-reminder:

1. Activate your CKAN virtual environment, for example:

   . /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate
   

2. Install the ckanext-reminder Python package into your virtual environment:

   pip install ckanext-reminder
   

3. Add reminder to the ckan.plugins setting in your CKAN config file (by default the config file is located at /etc/ckan/default/production.ini).

4. Restart CKAN. For example if you've deployed CKAN with Apache on Ubuntu:

   sudo service apache2 reload
   

5. Configure fields in the CKAN config file, the required configurations are listed below in the section "Config Settings".

6. Initialize database tables used by the subscribe to email notifications functionality:

   paster --plugin=ckanext-reminder reminder init --config=YOUR_CONFIGURATION.ini
   

7. Call the appropriate paster commands in e.g. a cronjob to send the reminders/notifications:

   # For admin reminders of dataset expiration
   paster --plugin=ckanext-reminder reminder send --config=YOUR_CONFIGURATION.ini
   
   # For update notifications to subscribed users
   paster --plugin=ckanext-reminder reminder notify --config=YOUR_CONFIGURATION.ini
   

Config Settings

The extension supports one recipient for reminder emails. Required configs are:

# The email links will be prefixed with this site url
ckanext.reminder.site_url = https://<YOUR_SITE_URL>

# This configuration can be overwritten in the admin configuration UI
# This is the default address where emails are sent if a dataset specific email is not set
ckanext.reminder.email = <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>

# Name of the field containing a date when the user should be reminded. The date should
# be in format year-month-day, for example "2018-05-31". The reminder is only sent
# if current date is the same as the date in the field specified at ckanext.reminder.date_field
ckanext.reminder.date_field = <DATE_FIELD>

# Name of the field containing the email address for the person responsible for
# maintaining the dataset. The email is sent to this address if this is configured
ckanext.reminder.email_field = <MAINTAINER_EMAIL_ADDRESS>

# (Optional field) Name of the field containing the name of the person responsible
# for maintaining the dataset. If this is not configured, the email address is used
# as the name instead
ckanext.reminder.recipient_name_field = <MAINTAINER_NAME_FIELD>

Development Installation

To install ckanext-reminder for development, activate your CKAN virtualenv and do:

git clone https://github.com/6aika/ckanext-reminder.git
cd ckanext-reminder
python setup.py develop
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt

Updating translations

To extract all translatable strings run this command in the plugin root directory:

python setup.py extract_messages

After this the updated ckanext-reminder.pot with the source language can be pushed to Transifex with the transifex client:

tx push --source

Translate new strings in Transifex and pull them by running:

# --force can be added if old translations can be overwritten by the ones fetched from transifex (this is usually the case)
tx pull