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!
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" ] ] } ]