[p2pu-dev] Two way communication for notifications and messaging

[Dirk Uys]

No problem. At the moment the notification code isn't in one place
(something we can work on).

I'm going to start explaining from the point where the email is sent
to the user and work my way backwards to where notifications are
generated. Please tell me if this ends up being confusing

Emails are sent to a user by calling
django.contrib.auth.models.User.email_user
(https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/#django.contrib.auth.models.User.email_user)

email_user() is called by an async celery task SendNotification
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/users/tasks.py#L25)

SendNotification tasks can be created in multiple places:

There is a signal
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/content/models.py#L245)
that fires when tasks are created or modified. This signal then calls
a function called send_email_notification
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/content/models.py#L213)
that creates SendNotifications tasks.

Another example is sent_creation_notification
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/projects/models.py#L270)
thats part of projects.models.Project. This function is called from
the create function
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/projects/models.py#L270/)
that in turn gets called in the create view
(https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/projects/views.py#L189)

I'm not sure at what other places SendNotification tasks are created,
but you can grep to code base to find out. grep -r SendNotification *

The fact that the places where SendNotification tasks are created are
spread all over isn't a problem in itself, but at the moment checks
for notification preference also seem spread out a bit. For example
task updates (https://github.com/p2pu/lernanta/blob/master/lernanta/apps/content/models.py#L234).
It also makes it difficult to implement batching of notifications.

Than being said, I think that notification may be one of the first
parts of Lernanta that we can put into a separate module without too
much surgery on the whole code base.

Cheers
d

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Dirk,
>
> I know nothing about the topic but curious about where the
> notifications code is and how it works... could you point me towards
> it?
>
> cheers,
> José
>
>
> On 1 June 2012 09:01, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I've been thinking a little bit about two way interaction for
>> messaging and notifications. On the software side of things I don't
>> foresee too much trouble, but on the config side of things I'm a
>> little uncertain.
>>
>> Our primary MX record points to google, then @lists.p2pu.org points to
>> the service we use for the mailing list. I guess we could use
>> something like @site.p2pu.org? I see that github uses
>> @reply.github.com with something that looks like a one time token.
>>
>> Is there any specific mail server that anyone would suggest? I have
>> always skipped the talk about mail servers when reading linux sysadmin
>> docs :)
>>
>> Cheers
>> d
>>
>> ps. I apologize for the thinking as I type email
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