Re: processing pending emails as part of your GTD system

[Erik Hetzner <ehetzner@gmail.com>]

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At Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:55:13 +0100,
Pete Phillips <pete@smtl.co.uk> wrote:
> This post is slighly off-topic, as it is not directly about org-mode.
> 
> As many of you on the list will know, I'm a big fan of David Allen's GTD
> system, and over the years I have tweaked my use of MH and MH-E to help
> support this use.
> 
> One thing I have done is design a method so that I can easily put emails
> into a set of 'pending' mail folders, and then get cron to process these
> and dump the emails back into my +inbox at appropriate dates.
>
> […]

This is a neat trick. I’m giving it a try to help me keep my inbox as
empty as possible.

However, I use IMAP & Wanderlust. Attached is a quick Ruby script that
should provide similar functionality for any IMAP system, and some
cron entries to call it, for anybody who wants it. This works for me,
but I have commented out the lines in the script which actually delete
mail from one mailbox; I don’t want to be responsible for losing mail.

The mailboxes used by the cron entries are (a little different from
yours):

pending/tomorrow
pending/tonight
pending/nextweek
pending/d01 .. pending/day31
pending/january .. pending/december
pending/monday .. pending/sunday
today

Hope this helps somebody.

best,
Erik Hetzner


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IMAP_PASSWORD=...
IMAP_USER=...
IMAP_HOST=...
IMAP_INBOX=INBOX

#############################################################
#  Mail Section
#############################################################
### Each month, refile all the pending stuff back to my inbox.
### 00:01 on the first day of each month
1 0 1 * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/`date +\%B | tr A-Z a-z` $IMAP_INBOX
### Each monday at 00:02 refile all the next-week stuff
2 0 * * 1 $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/nextweek $IMAP_INBOX
### Each day also has its own pending - Saturday, Sunday etc
3 0 * * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/`date +\%A | tr A-Z a-z` $IMAP_INBOX
### Each date of the month (1-31) also has its own pending - d01, d11, d31 etc
4 0 * * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/d`date +\%d` $IMAP_INBOX
### Each night at 17:30 - refile all pending/tonight to INBOX
30 17 * * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/tonight $IMAP_INBOX
### Each night at 12:30 - refile all today stuff back to INBOX
30 00 * * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb today $IMAP_INBOX
# Each day refile the tomorrow pending back to INBOX
5 0 * * * $HOME/bin/imap-dump-folder.rb pending/tomorrow $IMAP_INBOX


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#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'net/imap'

#defaults
host = ENV['IMAP_HOST'] || ''
port = (ENV['IMAP_PORT'] || '143').to_i
use_ssl = !(ENV['IMAP_SSL'].nil?)
user = ENV['IMAP_USER'] || ''
password = ENV['IMAP_PASSWORD'] || ''
source_folder = ""
target_folder = ""
help_me = false

def imap_dump_folder(host, port, use_ssl, user, password, source_folder, target_folder)
  imap = Net::IMAP.new(host, port, use_ssl)
  imap.login(user, password)
  imap.select(source_folder)
  (1..imap.responses["EXISTS"][-1]).each do |mid|
    imap.copy(mid, target_folder)
    #imap.store(mid, "+FLAGS", [:Deleted])
  end
  #imap.expunge()
end

def usage(do_exit = true)
  STDERR.print "usage: #{$0} [options] source target
  --host=string        host server name
  --port=string        host server port
  --ssl                use ssl
  --user=string        username
  --password=string    password
  --help               show this message.
"
  exit if do_exit
end

ARGV.each do |option|
  case (option)
  when /^--host=(.+)/
    host = $1
  when /^--port=([0-9]+)/
    port = $1.to_i
  when /^--user=(.+)/
    user = $1
  when /^--password=(.+)/
    password = $1
  when /^--ssl/
    use_ssl = true
  when /^--help/
    help_me = true
  when /^(.+)/
    if (source_folder == '') then
      source_folder = $1
    elsif (target_folder == '') then
      target_folder = $1
    else
      usage()
    end
  else
    usage()
  end
end

if (host == "" or user == "" or password == "" or source_folder == "" or target_folder == "" or help_me == true) then
  usage(true)
end

imap_dump_folder(host, port, use_ssl, user, password, source_folder, target_folder)

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