tattler 2.4.1
A client-server notification system for HTML emails, sms and more.
Requires Python: >=3.9

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🚩 Table of contents
====================

1. `👀 What is tattler?`_
2. `🤩 Examples`_
3. `🚀 Quick start`_
4. `📋 Templates`_
5. `📸 Live previews`_
6. `💙 Help us be better`_
7. `🎖️ License`_
8. `📈 Enterprise users`_
9. `📌 Links`_

👀 What is tattler?
===================

Are you building an online service and need to send beautiful, branded notifications via email or SMS to your users?

Tattler makes that easy for you. Your application makes a simple HTTP call to tattler:

.. code-block:: bash

   curl -X POST 'http://127.0.0.1:11503/notification/mywebapp/password_changed/?user=123'

Tattler helps you with these basics:

1. **Templates**: Load and expand powerful templates for event ``password_changed`` for email, SMS etc.
2. **MIME**: Assemble a multi-part email with HTML, text fallback and advanced headers that satisfy spam filters.
3. **Delivery**: Send the content through SMTP and an SMS delivery network.
4. **Live previews**: Get faithful email previews in real-time as you edit your templates.

and here's some more advanced features:

5. **Dev mode**: Let your applications trigger notifications to the real user, while tattler only delivers to your debug address.
6. **Addressbook**: Fetch the user's email address and mobile number from your DB (with trivial-to-write plug-ins).
7. **Template data**: Fetch variables for your templates from your DB (with trivial-to-write plug-ins).

Tattler is designed with simplicity in mind. It strives for trivial deployment so you can focus on your
communication, brand and customer journey.

If your system sends notifications from multiple different softwares -- say a web application, a billing daemon,
and a cron job which monitors inventory -- then tattler multiples your simplification gains 🚀

.. image:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/demos/tattler-benefit.png

😵‍💫 Don't beat around the bush!
---------------------------------

Tattler is:

- a server
- written in python
- for UNIX systems
- that exposes a REST interface
- which your applications contact
- to request delivery of notifications to users.


🤩 Examples
==============

Here's a little gallery of notifications sent via tattler to email and SMS:

.. list-table:: 

    * - .. figure:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/demos/tattler-notification-example-email-html.png

           Fig 1. Example notification as HTML email.

      - .. figure:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/demos/tattler-notification-example-email-plaintext.png

           Fig 2. Its corresponding plain text version.

    * - .. figure:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/demos/tattler-notification-demo-email-html-light.png

           Fig 3. Tattler's demo notification with reusable code samples.

      - .. figure:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/demos/tattler-notification-example-sms.png

           Fig 4. A SMS notification.


🚀 Quick start
=================

Install tattler:

.. code-block:: bash

   # create and load a virtualenv to install into
   mkdir ~/tattler_quickstart
   python3 -m venv ~/tattler_quickstart/venv
   . ~/tattler_quickstart/venv/bin/activate

   # install tattler into it
   pip install tattler

Run tattler server:

.. code-block:: bash

   export TATTLER_MASTER_MODE=production
   
   # if you need to customize your SMTP settings
   export TATTLER_SMTP_ADDRESS="127.0.0.1:25"
   export TATTLER_SMTP_AUTH="username:password" # you will learn secure configuration later
   export TATTLER_SMTP_TLS=yes

   # run tattler server on default 127.0.0.1:11503
   tattler_server

Trigger a demo notification via HTTP:

.. code-block:: bash

   # in a new terminal:
   
   # replace ``your@email.com`` with your actual email address
   curl -X POST 'http://127.0.0.1:11503/notification/demoscope/demoevent/?mode=production&user=your@email.com'

... or via command-line utility:

.. code-block:: bash

   # load the same virtual environment where you installed tattler server
   . ~/tattler_quickstart/venv/bin/activate

   # replace ``your@email.com`` with your actual email address
   tattler_notify -s '127.0.0.1:11503' -m production your@email.com demoscope demoevent

... or via tattler's python SDK:

.. code-block:: python3

   from tattler.client.tattler_py import send_notification

   # replace ``your@email.com`` with your actual email address
   send_notification('demoscope', 'demoevent', 'your@email.com', mode='production', srv_addr='127.0.0.1', srv_port=11503)

Done!

Want more? Proceed to the `complete quickstart <https://docs.tattler.dev/en/latest/quickstart.html>`_ in tattler's documentation
for plug-ins, deployment and more.


📋 Templates
===============

Tattler uses the powerful `Jinja <https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/3.1.x/templates/>`_ as default template engine:

.. code-block:: jinja

   Dear {{ user_firstname }}!

   Thank you for your order #{{ order.number }} with {{ order.products|length }} products:

   {% for product in order.products %}
   - {{ product.name }}
   {% endfor %}

   {% if user_account_type == 'premium' %}
   As a premium customer, your order will be at your doorstep tomorrow!
   {% else %}
   Delivery is expected by {{ delivery_date }}.
   {% endif %}

   {# a comment #}

Used to a different template engine already? Tattler also supports customizing this, too.

Tattler also allows you to share common style among all your notifications with
`base templates <https://docs.tattler.dev/en/latest/templatedesigners/base_templates.html>`_.
Put your style, header, footer and any common text into the base template -- so your event
templates only need to define the content specific to them.


📸 Live previews
===================

Perfect your communication in no time by getting high-fidelity, real-time previews while you edit your templates.

Tattler includes ``tattler_livepreview``, which monitors your template files, and fires a preview notification as soon as they change.

What's cool about this:

- You get the real output directly in your email program, where your users will. No misleading shortcuts with browsers!
- You get variables expanded too, giving you faithful previews of your filters, loops, conditionals etc.
- You do continual testing of template expansion before go-live, because ``tattler_livepreview`` runs through the very logic used by ``tattler_server``.


💙 Help us be better
=======================

Here's how you can help:

- ⭐️ star our `repository <https://github.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/>`_ if you like tattler. That's our go-to place whenever we feel sad! 😁
- Post about tattler online.

And if you're a developer:

- Report any `issue <https://github.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/issues>`_ in our code or docs. We take those seriously.
- Package tattler for your distribution. Else Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS and FreeBSD will serve the most people.
- Implement a client for tattler in another language.

See our `contributing guidelines <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/main/CONTRIBUTING.md>`_ for details.


🎖️ License
=============

Tattler is open-source software (BSD 3-clause license).


📈 Enterprise users
======================

Tattler is `enterprise-friendly <https://tattler.dev/#enterprise>`_. Enterprise users avail of a
subscription which provides a bugfixing warranty, extra features, and patronage for the continuity
of the project.


📌 Links
===========

- `Tattler website <https://tattler.dev>`_
- `Documentation <https://docs.tattler.dev>`_
- `HTTP API spec <https://tattler.dev/api-spec/>`_
- `Repository <https://github.com/tattler-community/tattler-community/>`_