Notify on Child Modification Plugin

This plugin allows some users to be immediately notified by mail each time a child of a given parent topic is modified.

Theory of operation

If this plugin is activated each time a topic WebTopic with parent WebParentTopic is modified, the web is searched for a topic with name WebParentTopicNotifyUsers. If this topic exists an email is sent to each user listed into. The text of the email must be stored in the topic WebParentTopicNotifyText or NotifyText. If the default email headers do not suits you, it is possible to add the NotifyOnChildModificationForm to your WebParentTopicNotifyText or NotifyText topic and select other ones. Note that the new variable %TOPICPARENT% can be used in the .*NotifyText topics and are replaced with the name of the parent topic (i.e. WebParentTopic in the current example).

Example

I used this plugin for a local set of forums implemented using TWiki. A forum is build of a main topic which list the entries (child topics of the main topic). The web hosts several forums and I wanted a mean for users to be noticed of entry modifications for a given forum (and not for all forums as do the classical notification of TWiki). With the NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin one can setup a notification system for one forum (of main topic ForumsMainGeneral) :

• First create a topic ForumsMainGeneralNotifyUsers with the same syntax as WebNotify topic.
• Second create a topic with the text of the mail to be sent, in my case I wanted the same notification for all forums so I used the text below in NotifyText topic :

Beloved TWiki user, 

Some modification occured in %TOPICPARENT% forum, the description of this forum is :
%SEARCH{"^%TOPICPARENT%$" scope="topic" regex="on" nosearch="on" nototal="on" noheader="on" format="'$formfield(ForumsFormMainTitle)'"}%

The modified entry title is %SEARCH{"^%TOPIC%$" scope="topic" regex="on" nosearch="on" nototal="on" noheader="on" format="'$formfield(ForumsFormItemTitle)'"}%

Your devoted TWiki system.

Thanks

I borrowed most of the perl code from the plain TWiki notification system (cgi-bin script notify).

Bugs

I'm a C/PHP/Bash programmer not a Perl one, so there is probably a lot of bugs . Ha ! I forgot to tell that I'm not an english speaker so there must be also a lot of errors in my text, please let me know, I will correct them.

Plugin Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the plugin on the server where TWiki is running.

• Download the tarball file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Untar NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin.tgz in your twiki installation directory. Content:

  File:	Description:
  data/TWiki/NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin.txt	Plugin topic
  data/TWiki/NotifyOnChildModificationForm*.txt	Plugin form
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module

NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write %<plugin>_<setting>%, i.e. %PHPPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Fine grain electronic mail notification.

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 1

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:	TWiki:Main/XavierREDON
Plugin Version:	28 Jun 2003 (V1.010)
Change History:
28 Jun 2003:	Initial version
CPAN Dependencies:	none
Other Dependencies:	none
Perl Version:	5.005
Plugin Home:	http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/NotifyOnChildModificationPlugin
Feedback:	http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/NotifyOnChildModificationPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

-- TWiki:Main/XavierREDON - 28 Jun 2003