SYNOPSIS
This is a Perl program to automate sending reminder notifications via email to Members of a Drupal website whose Membership is soon to expire. It works with the Membership Entity Drupal contributed modules, which do not, as of 12/3/2014, expose expiration dates to work with Drupal Rules.
The program uses an external configuration file for setting options and the Perl Template Toolkit to keep the content of the notification emails out of the program code. You will have to edit the configuration file, and may edit the templates to customize your reminder notifications, but you don't have to edit any code or even know anything about it to use this program.
To repeat: you will have to copy notify_expiring_members.config.sample to notify_expiring_members.config and then edit it. But you can use the provided template files out of the box if you wish.
CONTENTS
This program should have been distributed with the following files:
notify_expiring_member.pl <- the script, must be executable
notify_expiring_members.config.sample <- sample config file
initial.notification <- sample notification template
final.notification <- sample notification template
notify_expiring_members.README <- documentation; this fileINSTALLATION
Copy the files in this distribution to a directory where you have permission to execute files. If you download and unpack the .tar.gz archive, it will create create a directory called notify_expiring_members in which all the files will be placed.
Copy the file notify_expiring_members.config.sample to notify_expiring_members.config and then configure for your system.
Set a daily cron job to run the script.
Dependencies
This program depends on the following Perl modules:
The modules listed above have other dependencies, including MIME::Lite and Template::Toolkit, but these are installed on most shared hosting servers. MIME::Lite::TT and Config::Tiny do not require compilation so you should be able to install them in your local Perl lib directory even without root access.
USAGE
Configuration
This program stores all its configuration information in the file notify_expiring_members.config . The file is in the .ini format, like so:
[section]
conf_option = value
Note that no comments are allowed in the config file.
The following are the configuration options:
----------------------------------------------------
[program]
debug = switch to output debugging data at runtime
[database]
database = your database name
host = the host your database runs on (leave blank to use localhost)
port = the port your database listens on (leave blank to use 3306)
user = the database user (leave blank if MySQL uses your system username)
password = the database password for the database user (leave blank if none)
[organization]
short_name = short name for your organization used in email Subject
long_name = long name for your organization used in email body
website = URL of the website to which the Member has a Membership
[email]
sender = the email address from which to send notifications
signature = a one-line signature appended to email body
copy_to = a comma-separated list of email addresses to cc
[notifications]
n = /path/to/template (where the email sent to Members with n days remaining will be created with the named template)
-------------------------------
A note about [notifications]
You can send reminder notifications on any number of days before Membership expiration. For each number of days before expiration for which you want the program to search for soon-to-expire Members, you must include a configuration option in the [notifications] section. The option name should be the number of days and the value should be the path to the template file to be used. You can use a negative number for the number of days if you want to send a notification after expiration has occurred.
You can create a different notification template for each number of days on which notification is to be sent, or you can use the same template for more than one notification. For example, my config file contains this:
[notifications]
31 = initial.notification
14 = initial.notification
7 = initial.notification
1 = final.notification
-2 = expired.notification
Templates
The values for the options in the [notifications] section of the config file are the paths to the template files. You can name the files anything and put them anywhere so long as the path is valid and the file is readable.
The template is used by the program to build the notification email. It contains tokens so that you don't have to edit the script code. The following tokens are available for use in the templates:
[% name %] The first name of the Member (from the database)
[% organization %] The name of the organization to which the Member belongs (from the config file)
[% date %] The date on which the Membership will expire (from the database)
[% website %] The URL of the website to which the Member belongs (from the config file)
[% user %] The user name of the Member on the Drupal site (from the database)
[% signature %] The signature of the sender of the notification (from the config file)
Logging/Error checking
The program prints a report as it goes, so if you direct the output of the program to a file, it will effectively serve as a log. If you are running it from cron, do something like this:
32 3 * * * /path/to/notify_expiring_members.pl >> /path/to/your.log
The output of the program that will be logged looks like this:
################################################################
Initializing at 2015-06-07 03:32:01 -------------------------------------------------------------- Processing for 1 ... 12855 rastus Monday, June 8th, 2015 Sending email ... email sent. 11678 user007 Monday, June 8th, 2015 Sending email ... email sent. Finished. -------------------------------------------------------------- Processing for 7 ... Finished. -------------------------------------------------------------- Processing for 14 ... 13067 smcleod Sunday, June 21st, 2015 Sending email ... email sent. Finished. -------------------------------------------------------------- Processing for 31 ... Finished. -------------------------------------------------------------- Finished at 2015-06-07 03:32:01. ################################################################
Of course you can always include yourself on the list of copy_to email addresses in the configuration file, so that you see all the emails that the program sends.
SUPPORT
At the moment you can get support for this program at http://tinyurl.com/wbs-nem (the author's blog) or at the Drupal.org thread https://www.drupal.org/node/2385155
AUTHOR
Nick Tonkin <nick@websitebackendsolutions.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2014-2015 and All Rights Reserved Nick Tonkin. You may use this software freely and may redistribute it as long as the AUTHOR and COPYRIGHT sections of this file are not removed or changed.