emlgb

emlgb

Statically generates a guestbook based on e-mails.

Helpful if:

• you don't want to sign up for guestbook providers
• want to store your guests' messages on your own computer instead of a service
• don't or can't use javascript on your page.

What it does:

• generate a page based on files in a folder

What it doesn't do:

• signs in to your e-mail server or service provider to download e-mails
• stewards, copies, edits, or manages your e-mails as files.

(This script assumes you downloaded your emails either manually or through an email client.)

requirements

This script uses Python 3 and was tested with Python 3.12.5.

Autogenerated by pipreqs.

beautifulsoup4 python_dateutil  toml

usage

python src/guestbook.py -c yourconfig.toml > guestbook.html

The default config file assumes there is

• a folder of emails named inbox in the current working directory
• the page template mwe.html has been copied

diff/filters

Filters turn e-mail notifications from services into guestbook comments. Example: you want to include notifications sent by neocities in your guestbook.

When reading a filter, the script scans for keywords:

• {__username__}, the user on the service who wrote the comment
• {__message__}, the comment written by the user
• {__link__}, the link to the comment included by the e-mail notification
• {keep}, words from the e-mail notification to keep in the guestbook comment

Every other word that the email message and the filter have in common is omitted from the guestbook.

example (neocities)

• filters/neocities.html
• https://scuti.neocities.org/pages/guestbook, my rendered guestbook
• [[diff.services]] in example/config.toml

In this example, {__username__} is highlighted so the guestbook links back to the commenter's profile on neocities. The {__link__} is used to create an anchor tag on the timestamp.

misc

This was developed with my own use in mind. I currently don't receive enough guestbook comments to need to write a pagination function.