Hi fellow self-hosting lemmings,
In an SME setting, I’m looking for a service to regularly fetch mails from an IMAP server and print incoming mails and attachments on a local network printer based on rules (e.g., only print mails where the subject contains a specific word.)
Does a solution like that exist, ideally with a browser frontend to set it up?
Thank you!
BTW, if you do end up using this method, I’d love to see your implementation some day. Node Red is so useful and intuitive IMO, and people sharing their solutions is valuable.
One deep dive into the IPP protocol, printer drivers, and specific supported formats (“what the hell is an octet-stream?!”) later, I have something functional.
I’m not a JS guy, so I don’t know if it’s a very node-y way to do it. But except for the pages coming out a little scaled this works:
Edit to briefly explain what this does: The mail node ingests unread emails and passes them forward to a function node that checks for pdf attachments. Those are passed forward one by one to a function node that takes care of converting the pdf to pcl (my printer supposedly knows how to handle pdf 1.7 but doesn’t, so I had to resort to this) and passes it to the IPP node as a data buffer .
spoiler
[ { "id": "86082bed0ed29155", "type": "IPPrint", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "Print to Network", "IP": "10.10.0.19:631/ipp/print", "JOB_name": "default_job_name", "authuser": "", "authpassword": "", "authcheck": "", "x": 780, "y": 120, "wires": [ [ "b1a8b92ede8a78a5" ] ] }, { "id": "b1a8b92ede8a78a5", "type": "debug", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "debug 1", "active": true, "tosidebar": true, "console": false, "tostatus": false, "complete": "true", "targetType": "full", "statusVal": "", "statusType": "auto", "x": 960, "y": 120, "wires": [] }, { "id": "1fb7fc3843af8e05", "type": "function", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "Convert PDF to PCL", "func": "const baseOptions = {\n width: 2480,\n height: 3508,\n density: 300,\n preserveAspectRatio: true,\n format: 'PCL'\n};\n\n// prepare conversion function\nconst convert = await pdf2pic.fromBuffer(msg.payload, baseOptions);\n// set additional conversion options\nconvert.setGM\n// bulk convert the whole input buffer to a pcl output buffer\nconvert.bulk(-1, {responseType: \"buffer\"}).then((outputs)=>{\n // pass each page on to the printer\n outputs.forEach((output, index) => {\n msg.payload = output.buffer;\n if(msg.topic){\n let jobname = msg.topic\n }\n msg.JOBName = (msg.topic ? msg.topic : \"Mailjob\").concat(\" \", index+1, \"/\", outputs.length);\n msg.docFormat = \"application/octet-stream\";\n node.send(msg);\n });\n});\n", "outputs": 1, "timeout": 0, "noerr": 0, "initialize": "", "finalize": "", "libs": [ { "var": "pdf2pic", "module": "pdf2pic" } ], "x": 560, "y": 120, "wires": [ [ "86082bed0ed29155" ] ] }, { "id": "224317e794da3cb5", "type": "e-mail in", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "Mail ingest", "protocol": "IMAP", "server": "test.mail.com", "useSSL": false, "autotls": "always", "port": "143", "authtype": "BASIC", "saslformat": true, "token": "oauth2Response.access_token", "box": "INBOX", "disposition": "Read", "criteria": "UNSEEN", "repeat": "300", "fetch": "auto", "inputs": 0, "x": 160, "y": 80, "wires": [ [ "2fedaa18c9394b89" ] ] }, { "id": "2fedaa18c9394b89", "type": "function", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "PDF Filter", "func": "if(msg.attachments.length > 0){\n msg.attachments.forEach(function(attachment) {\n if(attachment.contentType == \"application/pdf\"){\n var newmsg = {};\n newmsg.topic = msg.topic;\n newmsg.filename = attachment.filename;\n newmsg.payload = attachment.content;\n node.send(newmsg);\n }\n });\n}", "outputs": 1, "timeout": 0, "noerr": 0, "initialize": "", "finalize": "", "libs": [], "x": 360, "y": 80, "wires": [ [ "1fb7fc3843af8e05" ] ] }, { "id": "3d8f7ad8e6b56d46", "type": "inject", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "Test print", "props": [ { "p": "payload" }, { "p": "topic", "vt": "str" } ], "repeat": "", "crontab": "", "once": false, "onceDelay": 0.1, "topic": "", "payload": "", "payloadType": "date", "x": 160, "y": 160, "wires": [ [ "683ed6fe7c10540d" ] ] }, { "id": "683ed6fe7c10540d", "type": "file in", "z": "08cc7c15668f2f65", "name": "", "filename": "/data/2517.pdf", "filenameType": "str", "format": "", "chunk": false, "sendError": false, "encoding": "none", "allProps": false, "x": 340, "y": 160, "wires": [ [ "1fb7fc3843af8e05" ] ] } ]