Step 1: Install msmtp (or any other program)

On OS X you can do this with “brew install msmtp”. (You can use sendmail or whatever, but msmtp was easy to set up.).

Step 2: Set up msmtp

Set up the appropriate configuration file. I ran into a problem wherein the program would just hang; turning on debug showed that it hung after “Reading recipients from command line.” This turned out to be an incorrect SSL configuration — I needed tls_starttls to be off.

My particular .msmtprc configuration:

defaults
tls on
tls_starttls off
tls_certcheck off
 
account Work
host mail.host.com
domain domain.com
auth on
port 465
protocol smtp
from from-name
user user-name
password password

Step 3: install sendmail replacement

For me, this was two things: a small shell script and a Python program that will convert any plaintext e-mail into a plaintext + HTML e-mail.

Shell script mark_send:

#!/bin/sh
/Users/tim/mutt/mark_and_send.py "/usr/local/bin/pandoc -s" | /usr/local/bin/msmtp -a Work $@

Python script mark_and_send.py:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import sys
import subprocess
import email
import email.parser
import tempfile
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
 
if len(sys.argv) == 1:
    print "usage: mark_and_send.py markdown_program [markdown_flag]"
    print "where:"
    print "    markdown_program is the name of the program to translate markdown."
    print "    markdown_flag is an optional indicator in the first line that determines whether to run the markdown program"
    sys.exit(0)
 
markdown_program = sys.argv[1]
 
p = email.parser.Parser()
m = p.parsestr(sys.stdin.read())
 
# is this a single header?
do_markdown = False
if not m.is_multipart() and m.get_content_maintype() == 'text' and m.get_content_subtype() == 'plain':
    do_markdown = True
    payload = m.get_payload()
    # optionally check the markdown flag
    if len(sys.argv) == 3:
        lines = payload.split("\n")
        do_markdown = lines[0] == sys.argv[2]
        if do_markdown:
            payload = "\n".join(lines[1:])
 
if do_markdown:
    tf = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete=False)
    tf.write(payload)
    tf.close()
 
    (markdown, error) = subprocess.Popen(markdown_program.split() + [tf.name], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()
 
    # create a new message with the exact same headers
    new_message = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
    for (k,v) in m._headers:
        new_message[k] = v
 
    text_plain = MIMEText(payload, 'plain')
    new_message.attach(text_plain)
 
    text_html = MIMEText(markdown, 'html')
    new_message.attach(text_html)
 
    print new_message.as_string()
    os.unlink(tf.name)
else:
    print m.as_string()

The mark_and_send.py program takes one required argument (the name of the program to convert from markdown to HTML, possibly quoted) an an optional indicator of markdown. If the first line of the message is the indicator, then it is stripped and the rest of the message is converted to HTML.

Step 3: set up mutt

You need to tell mutt to use your shell script instead of sendmail. I have it inside a folder hook:

folder-hook +work/.* 'set sendmail="/bin/sh /Users/tim/mutt/mark_send"'

Now, whenever you send a plain-text email, mutt will automatically run markdown on it and attach it as the HTML view of the message.

Results

• Markdown is not ideal for e-mail, at least, not without some work. For example: more e-mails that are quoted by default will not work properly in markdown, because there are not blank lines in the message to set off the blockquote. This could possibly be improved by post-processing the file that Mutt generates on a reply, but I don’t think there’s a hook for that.
• Code coloring is nice
• Math formulas, if you need them

Example is show below, as rendered by Zimbra. It isn’t perfect. Google will unfortunately strip the colors from the code coloring, and Zimbra loses leading indents, and both readers will require the user to load images. Nonetheless, in a pinch…

The Google code provides a command line program that can generate secret keys as well as a PAM module, but it turns out to be very little code to authenticate a TOTP, thereby providing two-factor authentication to your website very easily.

To give the user the key, you’ll need to generate a cryptographically-secure 10 byte random key, presented to the user as a base32 16-character string. They can either enter this string directly, or you can use Google charts to provide a barcode that they can scan into the Google Authenticator application:

def get_barcode_image(username, domain, secretkey):
    url = "https://www.google.com/chart"
    url += "?chs=200x200&chld=M|0&cht=qr&chl=otpauth://totp/"
    url += username + "@" + domain + "%3Fsecret%3D" + secretkey
    return url

For an example of what a code looks like, click here, or, look below:

After the user has a secret key from you and has entered it into Google Authenticator either by typing it in directly or scanning in the barcode, you have to be able to verify the key during login (for example). The code to authenticate is only a few lines in Python:

import time
import struct
import hmac
import hashlib
import base64
 
def authenticate(secretkey, code_attempt):
    tm = int(time.time() / 30)
 
    secretkey = base64.b32decode(secretkey)
 
    # try 30 seconds behind and ahead as well
    for ix in [-1, 0, 1]:
        # convert timestamp to raw bytes
        b = struct.pack(">q", tm + ix)
 
        # generate HMAC-SHA1 from timestamp based on secret key
        hm = hmac.HMAC(secretkey, b, hashlib.sha1).digest()
 
        # extract 4 bytes from digest based on LSB
        offset = ord(hm[-1]) & 0x0F
        truncatedHash = hm[offset:offset+4]
 
        # get the code from it
        code = struct.unpack(">L", truncatedHash)[0]
        code &= 0x7FFFFFFF;
        code %= 1000000;
 
        if ("%06d" % code) == str(code_attempt):
            return True
 
    return False

So, I wrote a tiny little program to help facilitate using git and WordPress together through the XMLRPC API, and it’s helped me write… well, if not more than at least less painfully.

Setting Up

Assuming that your blog is set up at http://www.yourblog.com (you can create an account at wordpress.com to test this out), all you’ll need to do is:

-- make a directory for the blog
mkdir blog
chdir blog
 
-- download everything
python wp.py download --user=yourname --password=yourpass --url=http://www.yourblog.com/xmlrpc.php
(wait a bit)
git init
git add .
git commit -m "first version"
 
-- now set up so we don't have to specify --user, --password, and --url every time (optional)
git wp config wp.url http://www.yourblog.com/xmlrpc.php
git wp config wp.user yourname
git wp config wp.password yourpass

The files are downloaded in the appropriate YYYY/MM directories, with the draft directory being used for all of your unpublished drafts.

All the drafts are stored in plain text, but you’ll see some lines starting with periods — these are various WordPress variables that are associated with the file. You can change them, as well; for example, to change the title of the post, just change the line that begins with “.title”.

Seeing What’s Different

You can use the status command to see differences between the local file system and your blog.

python wp.py status

Updating From The Blog

If you’ve made changes through the web interface and you’d like to bring them down, you don’t have to download everything again, but can instead just update.

python wp.py update

Posting/Editing

If you’d like to edit a post, just edit it, and then use wp post to push it back to the blog:

python wp.py post changed-file

To create a new post, just create a new file in the draft folder — I like to specify the .title and .wp_slug parameters, as well — and then post it. You can also publish it by changing the .post_status line from draft to publish.

Gotchas

While this program requires git, it doesn’t automatically check anything in — so you’ll need to make sure you do git add / git commit or whatnot as necessary.

There are also some gotchas due to the fact that the filename can change on you. There are cases where the filename that will be brought down is different then the one that you send up:

• You post a file without a .title or .wp_slug line
• You post a file with a different file name than the slug that is generated (i.e., “my-first-draft” when the title is actually “my final draft”)
• Something moves from “draft” to “publish”

When you see a message of the form “changed: fn1 -> fn2″, it means that a rename has occurred, and you’ll need to do the git rm/git add or git mv by hand.

Source

Installing MissingPy

I had an issue using Cabal to install MissingPy into my GHC 6.10 installation (Mac OS X). I went into the directory that had been unpacked and modified Setup.hs:

import Distribution.PackageDescription
import Distribution.PackageDescription.Parse  -- added this line
import Distribution.Simple

A cabal configure, build, and install of the package then installed everything.

Basic Usage

It’s easiest to play around with MissingPy in ghci. Before you do anything you’ll need to initialize the interpreter with py_initialize and import any necessary modules with pyImport. You can test by using pyRun_SimpleString:

# :m Python.Interpreter Python.Objects Python.Utils Python.Exceptions
# py_initialize
# pyRun_SimpleString "print 'hello'"
hello

The simplest useful way to execute python code is to use pyRun_String. For example:

-- add 1 and 2 in Python
-- can also use Py_file_input or Py_single_input for different handling of the context
addem = pyRun_String "1+2" Py_eval_input [] >>= fromPyObject :: IO Integer

There are also the callByName and pyObject_Call methods for more complicated scenarios.

callByName :: String            -- ^ Object\/function name
           -> [PyObject]        -- ^ List of non-keyword parameters
           -> [(String, PyObject)] -- ^ List of keyword parameters
           -> IO PyObject
 
pyObject_Call :: PyObject       -- ^ Object to call
              -> [PyObject]     -- ^ List of non-keyword parameters (may be empty)
              -> [(String, PyObject)] -- ^ List of keyword parameters (may be empty)
              -> IO PyObject    -- ^ Return value
 
-- example 1: create an IMAP instance
imap <- callByName "imaplib.IMAP4_SSL" [imap_hostname] []
 
-- call "foo.bar(p1,p2)"
bar <- getattr foo "bar"
result <- pyObject_Call bar [p1,p2] []

Manipulating Python Objects

The fromPyObject and toPyObject handle marshaling of objects from Haskell to Python and vice versa. There are some handy functions for doing common operations on Python objects that are especially useful from the REPL: reprOf (like Python repr), strOf (Python str), showPyObject (shows the type and repr), and dirPyObject (like the Python dir()).

# g <- pyRun_String "(1,2,'hello')" Py_eval_input []
# showPyObject g
"<type 'tuple'>: (1, 2, 'hello')"
# reprOf g
"(1, 2, 'hello')"
# strOf g
"(1, 2, 'hello')"
# dirPyObject g
["__add__","__class__","__contains__","__delattr__","__doc__","__eq__","__ge__",
"__getattribute__","__getitem__","__getnewargs__","__getslice__","__gt__",
"__hash__","__init__","__iter__","__le__","__len__","__lt__","__mul__","__ne__",
"__new__","__reduce__","__reduce_ex__","__repr__","__rmul__","__setattr__","__str__"]

Dealing with Data

Tuples look like lists when they are returned. There is no conversion of tuples in the toPyObject call, so you’ll need to just convert a list and then convert it to a tuple with pyList_AsTuple. Passing “None,” “True,” or “False” is trickier; the only way I found to do it was create an instance of the value and use it in subsequent calls.

# a
[1,2]
# b <- toPyObject a
# reprOf b
"[1L, 2L]"
# pyList_AsTuple b >>= reprOf
"(1L, 2L)"
 
-- get "True," "False," and "None"
none <- pyRun_String "None" Py_eval_input []
pyTrue <- pyRun_String "True" Py_eval_input []
pyFalse <- pyRun_String "False" Py_eval_input []
 
-- try it out
# r <- pyRun_String "1==1" Py_eval_input []
# r == pyTrue
True

Passing Haskell Objects

If you want to call into functions without having to deal with Python objects, there are a couple of calls that automatically marshal the objects back and forth for you (all suffixed with “Hs”), although they turn out to be less than useful in most situations, since a) the parameters passed in must all be the same type, and b) extracting most return objects from Python is painful.

Exceptions

Python exceptions can be caught and handled; probably the easiest default way to do this is to use handlePy in conjunction with the ex2ioerr handler, which will automatically print the exception and fail.

addem = handlePy exc2ioerror $ 
           do r <- pyRun_String "1/0" Py_eval_input []
              fromPyObject r :: IO Integer
 
# addem
*** Exception: user error (Python <type 'exceptions.ZeroDivisionError'>: integer division or modulo by zero)