Echomail of Fidonet: generator of headers

This module (efgh) is a generator of HTML5 representations of headers for Fidonet echomail messages.

This module is written in JavaScript and requires Node.js to run. It uses some ECMAScript 2015 features, and thus a relatively recent Node.js is required. The module is tested against Node.js v4, Node.js v5, Node.js v6, Node.js v7, and the latest stable Node.js version.

Installing EFGH

• Latest packaged version: npm install efgh

• Latest githubbed version: npm install https://github.com/Mithgol/efgh/tarball/master

The npm package does not contain the tests, they're published on GitHub only.

You may visit https://github.com/Mithgol/efgh#readme occasionally to read the latest README because the package's version is not planned to grow after changes when they happen in README only. (And npm publish --force is forbidden nowadays.)

Using EFGH

When you require() the installed module, an object is returned.

That object's sync property represents the synchronous interface. An asynchronous interface is planned, but not (yet) implemented.

The synchronous interface

When you require() the installed module, an object is returned. Its sync property represents the synchronous interface.

That property is a function that accepts an object of settings and returns (synchronously) the corresponding HTML5 representation of a header for a Fidonet echomail message.

That header is returned as a JavaScript string.

An object of settings has the following fields:

• nodelist — by default, false. It may also contain an object constructed by the constructor returned from the Fidonet nodelist module. In the latter case, the Fidonet nodelist is used to determine the physical location (town, suburb, city, etc.) of the message's sender (using the Fidonet address); that location is displayed in the header.

• avatarWidth — width (in CSS pixels) of an avatar of the message's author (or of a default avatar). By default, 140. This value does not have to be equal to the avatar's width in physical pixels (for example, where window.devicePixelRatio != 1 in your client-side code).

• avatarURL — URL of the avatar (i.e. of the picture).

• from — the sender's name.

• origAddr — the sender's address.

• to — the recipient's name.

• origTime — the time when the message was written. Either a string or an array of year, month, day, hour, minute, second.

• procTime — the time when the message was processed by an echoprocessor. Either a string or an array of year, month, day, hour, minute, second.

  • This setting is optional. You may decide to pass an undefined value if you prefer the headers of the same Fidonet message to be exactly the same on different Fidonet systems (i.e. to not depend on the processing's time). For example, it helps to prevent redundant copies of the message in a global content-addressable storage (such as IPFS).

• subj — the message's subject line.

• URL — FGHI URL of the message.

• messageHTML — by default, false. It means that the HTML5 table is closed by its closing tag (</table>).

  • If messageHTML === true, the header (HTML5 <table>) is not completed and thus the returned string ends with open tr and td elements; the message's main text (in HTML) can be added after those elements and ended with </td></tr></table> to end the table. The td element is given the class messageText.
  • Also messageHTML can be a JavaScript string containing the message's main text (in HTML). In such case the string returned from .sync() contains the whole message (not only the header as an HTML table, but also the main text in the last row of the same HTML table).

CSS rules

Three Bootstrap classes ('table', 'table-bordered', 'table-condensed') are assigned to the header's table.

Two additional classes are used for EFGH purposes:

• inverse — this class is assigned to individual headers (From, To, Subj, FGHI URL) and provides an inverted look (white text on dark background)

• avatar — this class is assigned to the TH element of the avatar (user's picture) and ensures its proper display (for example, background-size: contain).

CSS rules for these two EFGH classes are provided in the file styles/efgh.css. Users of EFGH are expected to reference that file or include it in their CSS.

• To facilitate such references, require('efgh').pathCSS() returns path.join(__dirname, 'styles', 'efgh.css') (in other words, the full path to the efgh.css file).

HTML5 headers generated by EFGH may not be displayed properly if HTML5 representation is provided without the corresponding CSS rules (for example, in description elements of RSS items).

Testing EFGH

It is necessary to install Mocha and JSHint for testing.

• You may install Mocha globally (npm install mocha -g) or locally (npm install mocha in the directory of EFGH).

• You may install JSHint globally (npm install jshint -g) or locally (npm install jshint in the directory of EFGH).

After that you may run npm test (in the directory of EFGH).

License

MIT license (see the LICENSE file).