Getting Started : Installing Pods

Generally the pattern for installing a pod is to manually request it via npm from the bipio server root, like so :

$ npm install bip-pod-email
bip-pod-email@0.0.3 node_modules/bip-pod-email
├── pkginfo@0.2.3
├── ejs@0.7.1
└── nodemailer@0.5.2 (simplesmtp@0.3.8, mailcomposer@0.2.1)

Once installed, enable it!

$ ./tools/pod-install.js -a email
Wrote to config/default.json

The initial install of a pod will populate your environment config file with a sparse 'default' configuration. Check in the 'pods' container and configure where necessary before restarting the server.

$ cat config/default.json
.....
"pods": {
    "email": {
        "mailer": {
            "host": "localhost",
            "port": 25
        }
    }
}

If you see an exception along the lines of

TypeError: OAuthStrategy requires a consumerKey option

.. when installing, it means that the environment config (config/{environment}.json) has not been set, so fix it by registering your application with the Pod's OAuth provider and plugging the client id+secret into the pods section of config before retrying the install.

Once the server has restarted, confirm the pod has been registered by calling the 'describe' RPC http://localhost:5000/rpc/describe/pod in your browser :

{
   "email":{
      "name":"email",
      "description":"Email",
      "icon" : "/static/img/pods/email.png"
      "auth":{
         "type":"none",
         "status":"accepted"
      },
      "actions":{
         "smtp_forward":{
            "description":"Send an Email",
            "description_long":"Use to forward email messages to a chosen recipient (requires recipient verification)",
            "auth_required":false,
            "trigger":false,
            "singleton":false,
            "config":{
               "properties":{
                  "rcpt_to":{
                     "type":"string",
                     "description":"Email Address (eg: foo@bar.com)",
                     "optional":false,
                     "unique":true,
                     "validate":[
                        {
                           "pattern":"email",
                           "msg":"Invalid Email"
                        }
                     ]
                  }
               }
            },
            "renderers":{

            },
            "defaults":{

            },
            "exports":{
               "properties":{
                  "response_code":{
                     "description":"SMTP Response Code"
                  },
                  "response_message":{
                     "description":"SMTP Response Message"
                  }
               }
            },
            "imports":{
               "properties":{
                  "subject":{
                     "description":"Message Subject"
                  },
                  "body_html":{
                     "description":"HTML Message Body"
                  },
                  "body_text":{
                     "description":"Text Message Body"
                  },
                  "reply_to":{
                     "description":"Reply To"
                  }
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }
}