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

EMAIL

You can get an abbreviated newsletter with ./scripts/make-email.sh

Send to : [email protected]

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