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hackrva-communications

This app creates a newsletter from the Meetup.com calendar.

Events are stored in the ./data/hackrva.sqlite file.

Usage

  • edit the newsletter.json file to update the values month, welcomeImageURL, mindate, and maxdate
    "month": "December",
    "welcomeImageURL": "december.png",
    "mindate": "2022-12-01",
    "maxdate": "2022-12-31",
  • ensure there is a file in html/<monthname>.png for the banner
  • run: ./scripts/make-newsletter.sh <monthname>
    • NOTE: the monthname is a double-check that you've updated the newsletter.json file

Results

  • The output HTML is in the html/<monthname>.html folder
  • Upload both the html and png files to the HackRVA.org wiki "Media" area
  • Create a Post which points to the <monthname>.html` URL in the "Media" area

Design Notes

Getting the Meetup Events

  • curl https://api.meetup.com/hackrva-meetup/events | jq > events.json
  • This command
    • calls the Web Service routine from Meetup.com
    • formats it with jq (which is optional)
    • stores it in events.json
  • Meetup will send a year's worth of events that have not occurred in the past

Updating the database

  • ./js/update-database.js events.json
  • This Command
    • reads the events.json
    • adds each record to the data/hackrva.sqlite flat-file database table
  • NOTE: It will overrite existing records with the same Meetup-event-id.
  • If you do this twice a month, all the old and new events will be stored
  • Meaning that updating the newsletter will work, and you can regenerate old newsletters

Extract the events from the local database

  • ./js/extract-events.js > monthly-json/$month.json
  • This Command
    • gets the mindate and maxdate from the newsletter.json file
    • queries the Event table from data/hackrva.sqlite
    • writes the event records to monthly-json/$month.json for the particular month

Merge the month's events into an HTML file

  • ./js/newsletter-merge.js monthly-json/$month.json > html/$month.html
  • This Command
    • combines the parts of the HTML template from the template/ folder
    • replaces {{fieldname}} fields with values from each event in the monthly-json/$month.json file
    • writes the output to the html/$month.html

Display the output in a browser for your inspection

  • open html/$month.html
  • This Command
    • is Mac-specific
    • You'll have to change it for other OSs
    • Or just double-click on the resulting html/$month.html file

Folder Structure

  • data/ - holds the sqlite3 database
  • html/*.html - the resultant monthly newsletters are stored here
  • html/*.png - the monthly 'header' .png files go here. YOU supply them.
  • js/ - javascript files
    • models/ - table definition for the tables. (Event.js)
  • monthly-json/ - temporary storage for each month's events in JSON format
  • scripts/ - bash shell scripts
  • template/ - html fragments for the newsletter's HTML
    • NOTE: the files are joined in alphabetical order
    • NOTE: the event-header.htm and event.htm have {{macro}} fields that are expanded for each event