News Article to Email application

Article-to-email takes a url link to any news article and sends the contents of the article to a given email in plain text.

It is useful in cases where the recipient would like to forward relevant articles to themselves but only has access to email content.

How does it work?

This is a Docker implementation of article-to-email application running on Flask, managed with supervisord.

Given a link to the article and the email of the recipient, the app will scrape the contents of the article, pass the contents to an email server in plain text and dispatch the email to the given recipient email address.

Getting Started

Running this setup

1. From server, run the following command:

   cd ~
   git clone [email protected]:channeng/email-article.git
   cd email-article

2. From local, copy credentials and config into server

   scp -r credentials $SERVER:/home/ubuntu/email-article/credentials
   scp config.py $SERVER:/home/ubuntu/email-article/

3. In server, install Docker and build docker image

   sudo bash scripts/debian_jessy_docker_setup.sh

   • To obtain SuperUser access for Docker command, run: sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
   • Exit server and ssh back in

4. (Optional) Stop any containers running on existing docker image

   docker container stop email-article

5. Build docker image

   docker build -t email-article .

   Note: If memory error on installing lxml, run the following and try building docker image again.

   sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=524288
   sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
   sudo mkswap /swapfile
   sudo swapon /swapfile
   docker build -t email-article .

   after you're done:

   sudo swapoff /swapfile

6. Run docker container

   # To mount docker volume using local dir
   # Changes will be reflected on local dir db
   docker run -d --name email-article -p 80:5000 -v /path/to/database:/home/ubuntu/email-article/database -v /path/to/ticker_plots:/home/ubuntu/email-article/app/static/ticker_plots email-article /usr/bin/supervisord --nodaemon

   (Optional, if running with Docker volume)

   # Create docker volume for database
   docker volume create email-article-db
   # Check that volume exists:
   docker volume ls | grep email-article-db
   # Run container with docker volume
   docker run -v email-article-db:/home/ubuntu/email-article/database -p 80:5000 -d email-article /usr/bin/supervisord --nodaemon

7. Enter bash terminal

   docker exec -it email-article /bin/bash

Other commands:

• To save a backup of the database:

   docker cp email-article:/home/ubuntu/email-article/database/ database_copy/app.db

• To copy an updated config into Docker container:

   docker cp email-article/config.py email-article:/home/ubuntu/email-article

• To test DB migration:

  • Copy database/app.db from docker -> server -> database/app.db
  • Run the following commands:

     rm -rf migrations/
    
     # Delete any previous alembic version in DB
     sqlite3 database/app.db < delete_alembic_version.sqlite
    
     # Create migrations folder to prepare for migration script
     flask db init
    
     # Generate migration script
     flask db migrate
    
     # Check that changes are as expected, before executing the following:
     flask db upgrade