Pluggable email handler for Trac

Notice: This plugin is unmaintained and available for adoption.

Description

This plugin handles incoming emails within Trac, by parsing and displaying its contents on a Trac ticket. This is useful for software development teams who communicate via email on a topic and want to automatically create a ticket by sending for example a summary to a specified Trac address without the need to enter Trac and create a new ticket there. Attachments are also included in the ticket. A fully worked out basic example is given below.

Specifically Mail2trac provides:

• a shell script mail2tracAdmin that calls trac-admin
• an extension point that allows email messages to be handled by other Trac plugins.

The shell script mail2tracAdmin may be called by an ​MTA, for example ​postfix. It will open a Trac environment and run through each enabled IEmailHandler​ and execute its invoke() method if its match() method returns True.

• If invoke returns an ​email message, then subsequent IEmailHandlers will also process the message.
• If None is returned, then the message is consumed and execution stops.

To enable the plugin for postfix, add an appropriate line to the aliases file, usually /etc/aliases or /etc/postfix/aliases and then refreshing the aliases database, see ​man aliases.

The mail2tracAdmin script takes the path to the project environment as argument. The incoming email address should be specified in the trac.ini file:

[notification]
smtp_replyto =

As an example, if smtp_replyto is set to foo@example.com and the project is in /var/trac/bar, then the aliases file on example.com should have a line as follows:

foo: "| /path/to/mail2tracAdmin /var/trac/bar"

See also: EmailtoTracScript

Usage

Permission

This plugin declares the following permissions:

• MAIL2TICKET_COMMENT : user authorized to comment
• MAIL2TICKET_PROPERTIES : user authorized to change properties, like 'owner', 'cc', etc.
• MAIL2TICKET_CREATE : user authorized to create a ticket
• MAIL2TICKET_ADMIN : all the above

In order to post a ticket :

• the Trac address must be correctly configured.
• the mail address must have been declared in your user preferences.
• have the correct permissions set and according to what you intend to do.
• the UNIX user launching mail2tracAdmin should have permission on the Trac files, even file creation for attachment.

mail parsing

An email is parsed by mail2trac as follows:

• Header
  • Subject field :
    • if it begins by create : , mail2trac will create a ticket with the subject as summary (minuscreate :)
    • if it contains #id_of_ticket (#42 for example), mail to trac will comment (and possibly update ticket fields) with the mail
    • else it will be ignored

• Body :
  • any line beginning with #field with field one of these: type, priority, milestone, component, version, resolution, keywords, cc, will be treated as request to change the 'field' property; works only with the MAIL2TICKET_PROPERTIES permission.
  • mail2trac understand classic actions : resolve, reassign, accept and reopen, as in the classical web UI:
    • #reassign : user , reassign to user
    • #resolve : resolution, The resolution will be set to resolution. Next status will be 'closed'
    • #accept : Next status will be 'accepted' and owner fixe to yourself
    • #reopen : The resolution will be deleted. Next status will be 'reopened'
  • for usability, few actions have an alias :
    • #fixed is interpreted as #resolve:fixed,
    • #duplicate is interpreted as #resolve:duplicate,
    • #wontfix is interpreted as #resolve:wontfix,
    • #invalid is interpreted as #resolve:invalid,
  • parsing will stop at the #end tag, meaning everything after #end will be ignored by mail2trac
  • any #field or #end will be ignored, and what's left is the ticket's description if you create, or the comment if you comment.

Rq : upon creation you can assign a ticket by setting its owner with #owner : jdoe. In a response you have to use the action #reassign.

Attachments

Any mail attachments will be included as attachment in the ticket.

Example

Creation:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: marvin_trac
Subject: create : example for mail2trac

This ticket is an example for mail2trac.
(this is in fact the description of the ticket)

we want a cc to jdoe, a component to component2 and a priority to
trivial.

we can do that with #cc:jdoe, #component: component2 and #priority :
trivial .
(note that this instruction are not on the beginning of a line and will
be seen as part of the description)

 #cc:jdoe
#component: component2
  #priority: trivial

#end
the parsing stop here, this sentence will not be in the description
(note that instruction like #cc can have space anywhere)

Trac answer:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+----------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  somebody
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  new
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+----------------------
 This ticket is an example for mail2trac.
 (this is in fact the description of the ticket)

 we want a cc to jdoe, a component to component2 and a priority to
 trivial.

 we can do that with #cc:jdoe, #component: component2 and #priority :
 trivial .
 (note that this instruction are not on the beginning of a line and will
 be seen as part of the description)

We send:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: test <marvin_trac>
Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac

we reassign it to jdoe and change its cc to nothing

#reassign: jdoe
#cc: ''


#end
On 26/10/2011 15:03, test wrote:
> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:03:57 -0000
> From: test <marvin_trac>
> To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
> Subject: [test] #42: example for mail2trac
> X-Mailer: Trac 0.12.2, by Edgewall Software
>
> #42: example for mail2trac
> -------------------------+----------------------
>   Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  somebody
>       Type:  defect      |     Status:  new
>   Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
>  Component:  component2  |    Version:
> Resolution:              |   Keywords:
> -------------------------+----------------------
>  This ticket is an example for mail2trac.
>  (this is in fact the description of the ticket)
>
>  we want a cc to jdoe, a component to component2 and a priority to
>  trivial.
>
>  we can do that with #cc:jdoe, #component: component2 and #priority :
>  trivial .
>  (note that this instruction are not on the beginning of a line and will
>  be seen as part of the description)
>

Answer:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+----------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  jdoe
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  assigned
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+----------------------
Changes (by sender):

 * cc: jdoe (removed)
 * cc: '' (added)
 * owner:  somebody => jdoe
 * status:  new => assigned


Comment:

 we reassign it to jdoe and change its cc to nothing

We accept the ticket:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: test <marvin_trac>
Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac

in fact we want the ticket
#accept

Note that the end end part is not mandatory.

Answer:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+----------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  sender
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  accepted
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+----------------------
Changes (by sender):

 * status:  assigned => accepted
 * owner:  jdoe => sender


Comment:

 in fact we want the ticket

We close it:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: test <marvin_trac>
Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac

we close as fixed
#resolve: fixed

#end
On 26/10/2011 15:14, test wrote:
> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:14:31 -0000
> From: test <marvin_trac>
> To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
> Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac
> X-Mailer: Trac 0.12.2, by Edgewall Software

Trac says:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+--------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  sender
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  closed
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+--------------------
Changes (by sender):

 * status:  accepted => closed


Comment:

 we close as fixed

We reopen:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: test <marvin_trac>
Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac

Arf, no it's not done, i reopen
#reopen

We get:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+----------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  sender
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  reopened
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+----------------------
Changes (by sender):

 * status:  closed => reopened


Comment:

 Arf, no it's not done, i reopen

We close it again:

From: Sender <sender@bearstech.com>
To: test <marvin_trac>
Subject: Re: [test] #42: example for mail2trac

resolve as invalid, but instead of #resolve: invalid we use the alias #invalid
#invalid

And finally this ticket is closed:

#42: example for mail2trac
-------------------------+--------------------
  Reporter:  sender      |      Owner:  sender
      Type:  defect      |     Status:  closed
  Priority:  trivial     |  Milestone:
 Component:  component2  |    Version:
Resolution:              |   Keywords:
-------------------------+--------------------
Changes (by sender):

 * status:  reopened => closed


Comment:

 resolve as invalid, but instead of #resolve: invalid we use the alias
 #invalid

Bugs/Feature Requests

Existing bugs and feature requests for MailToTracPlugin are here.

If you have any issues, create a new ticket.

defect	7 / 12
enhancement	4 / 6
task	1 / 3

Download

Download the zipped source from here.

Source

You can check out MailToTracPlugin from here using Subversion, or browse the source​ with Trac.

Installation

General instructions on installing Trac plugins can be found on the TracPlugins page.

Recent Changes

16530 by rjollos on 2017-04-16 02:21:26

Fix indentation

14732 by rjollos on 2015-06-22 22:05:09

1.0: Plugin has no package data.

14731 by rjollos on 2015-06-22 22:03:02

1.0: Set version to 1.0.

(more)

Author/Contributors

Author: k0s
Maintainer: none (needsadoption)
Contributors: