secretsanta

He's making a list, sampling it twice 🎅

Ho ho ho!

This package will help you set up your annual Secret Santa event!

You supply a list of participant names, and secretsanta will randomize them into giver/recipient pairs. The package then e-mails each person to tell them who their unsuspecting recipient is.

The full list of giver/recipient assignments is kept secret, even from the person who uses this package. That means the event organizer can also participate in the gift-giving without spoiling any surprises. However, the package also logs the assignments in a CSV for future reference, in case it is needed (but no peeking!).

Install

remotes::install_github("ataustin/secretsanta")

Overview

The workflow of this package looks like this:

library(secretsanta)

santa_config <- "path/to/config.json"   # specifies information for your event
authenticate(santa_config)              # allows R to communicate with Gmail via API
run_secret_santa(santa_config)          # randomizes participants and sends e-mails

To use this package, first set up your Gmail credentials, then create a config. Read on for details!

Authentication with Gmail

This package uses the Gmail API which is accessed using the gmailr package documented here. Setting up your authentication will be the hardest part of using this package. Please follow the "Setup and auth" section of the gmailr docs to learn more.

Your goal during setup is the following:

• create a project on Google Cloud Platform
• generate OAuth Client ID credentials for desktop
• download the OAuth client JSON

This client JSON file will become the credential file used in the secretsanta config.

Write a secretsanta config file

This package requires a config file in JSON format to store details about your participants, file locations, and the e-mail to send. Here is a template:

{
  "participants": {
    "contact": {
      "Jim": "jim@dundermifflin.com",
      "Pam": "pam@dundermifflin.com",
      "Angela": "angela@dundermifflin.com",
      "Dwight": "assistantregionalmanager@dundermifflin.com",
      "Michael": "number1boss@dundermifflin.com"
    },
    "do_not_pair": {
      "Dwight": "Jim",
      "Jim": "Pam"
    }
  },
  "files": {
    "gmailr_credentials": "/path/to/gmail-api/credentials.json",
    "assignment_log": "/path/to/write/assignments.csv"
  },
  "email_settings": {
    "author": {
      "name": "Jim Halpert",
      "email_address": "jim@dundermifflin.com"
    },
    "message": {
      "subject": "Dunder Mifflin Secret Santa",
      "body": "Dear GIVER,\nHo ho ho!  Your Secret Santa recipient is RECIPIENT.\nYours,\nSanta"
    }
  }
}

Here are some details about the fields:

• participants
  • contact: key-value pairs of participant names and e-mails addresses. Keys must be unique, so if you have two Bobs, include last names in the key, e.g. "Bob Jones" and "Bob Smith"
  • do_not_pair: optional section; if you wish to prevent two people from being matched (for example spouses or pranksters), list their names here as key-value pairs. The names must match a key in the contact section. This is a two-way exclusion, so a single key-value pair will prevent both parties from being matched to the other.
• files
  • gmailr_credentials: file path pointing to the JSON credentials file for the Gmail API
  • assignment_log: file path where you want to write the CSV log file of givers and recipients
• email_settings
  • author
    • name: the Secret Santa e-mail will appear to come from this person
    • email_address: the Secret Santa e-mail will appear to come from this address
  • message
    • subject: the subject line for the Secret Santa e-mail
    • body: the body of the Secret Santa e-mail, best kept short and sweet. Important: you must include the terms GIVER and RECIPIENT (in capital letters) in this field. These words will be replaced with actual giver & recipient names before the e-mail is sent.

Authenticate

Once you set up Gmail authentication and have written your config, you can authenticate:

authenticate("path/to/config.json")

This connects you to Gmail and allows you to send e-mails.

Test before going live

After authentication, you may wish to test your config prior to sending Secret Santa e-mails to all participants:

test_secret_santa("path/to/config.json", mail_to = "your_address@domain.com")

This function performs random giver/recipient assignments and then sends one test message, as it would appear to someone in your participant pool, to the e-mail address you specify. This allows you to ensure that the e-mail looks the way you intend.

Testing does not spoil any surprises, because giver/recipient pairs are always re-randomized anytime e-mails are sent.

Please note testing does NOT save a CSV log file.

Send the Christmas joy!

When you are ready to randomize the giver/recipient pairs and send e-mails to all participants, run the following:

run_secret_santa("path/to/config.json")

Final notes

How randomization works

The package makes giver/recipient pairs by scrambling the names of participants using sample() and assigning each person to the one after them in the resulting vector (with recycling). This creates a single closed loop of givers and recipients so that, during gift opening, the flow can continuously move from recipient to giver until all participants have opened their gifts.

Authentication is designed to frighten you

The first time you run authenticate() Google will provide you with an alarming number of scary-looking screens and e-mails. You will have to proceed past an "unsafe" screen and give secretsanta read & write access to your Gmail account.

Rest assured that only your local copy of secretsanta gets these privileges, not me or anyone else. It's the same process as connecting any app to your e-mail client. If you aren't sure, feel free to browse the source code of the repo to see what the package is doing. Interaction with Gmail occurs through the gmailr package only and the package is only sending new e-mails, not looking for or modifying existing ones.

Troubleshooting authentication

Authentication with the Gmail API can be a headache. If it's not working, try the following:

• install the dev version of gargle with remotes::install_github("r-lib/gargle") to get the latest patches
• use R for desktop (rather than, say, RStudio Server even if running locally)
• ensure your OAuth client's credential type is "desktop"

Authentication & RStudio Server

As of the 2022 season, I wasn't been unable to authenticate using RStudio Server running in WSL2. This is probably due to Google's deprecation of out-of-band workflows. While I haven't had time to debug this, I was able to authenticate from RStudio running on the desktop using an OAuth client ID for desktop app.