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Tristan Ross edited this page Oct 31, 2020 · 62 revisions

Usage

Read here.

Description

Shows mails count fetching over IMAP.

local myimap = lain.widget.imap(args)

New mails are notified like this:

+--------------------------------------------+
| +---+                                      |
| |\ /| [email protected] has 3 new messages |
| +---+                                      |
+--------------------------------------------+

Input table

Required parameters are:

Variable Meaning Type
server Mail server string
mail User mail string
password User password string
widget Widget to render function

while the optional are:

Variable Meaning Type Default
port IMAP port integer 993
timeout Refresh timeout (in seconds) integer 60
pwdtimeout Timeout for password retrieval function (see here) integer 10
is_plain Define whether password is a plain password (true) or a command that retrieves it (false) boolean false
followtag Notification behaviour boolean false
notify Show notification popups string "on"
settings User settings function empty function

settings can use imap_now table, which contains the following non negative integers:

  • ["MESSAGES"]
  • ["RECENT"]
  • ["UNSEEN"]

example of fetch: total = imap_now["MESSAGES"]. For backwards compatibility, settings can also use mailcount, a pointer to imap_now["UNSEEN"].

Also, settings can modify mail_notification_preset table, which will be the preset for the naughty notifications. Check here for the list of variables it can contain. Default definition:

mail_notification _preset = {
    icon = "lain/icons/mail.png",
    position = "top_left"
}

Note that mailcount and imap_now elements are equals to 0 either if there are no new mails or credentials are invalid, so make sure that your settings are correct.

With multiple screens, the default behaviour is to show a visual notification pop-up window on the first screen. By setting followtag to true it will be shown on the currently focused tag screen.

You can have multiple instances of this widget at the same time.

Password security

The reason why is_plain is false by default is to discourage the habit of storing passwords in plain.

In general, when is_plain == false, password can be either a string, a table or a function: the widget will execute it asynchronously in the first two cases.

Using plain passwords

You can set your password in plain like this:

myimapcheck = lain.widget.imap {
    is_plain = true,
    password = "mymailpassword",
    -- [...]
}

and you will have the same security provided by ~/.netrc.

Using a password manager

I recommend to use spm or pass. In this case, password has to be a function. Example stub:

myimapcheck = lain.widget.imap {
    password = function()
        -- do your retrieval
        return retrieved_password, try_again
    end,
    -- [...]
}

Where retrieved_password is the password retrieved from the manager, and try_again supports DBus Secret Service.

The process flow is that the first password() call spawns the unlock prompt, then the second call retrieves the password. Here is an example of password function.

Output table

Variable Meaning Type
widget The widget wibox.widget.textbox
update Update widget function
timer The widget timer gears.timer
pwdtimer Password retrieval timer (available only if password is a function) gears.timer

The update function can be used to refresh the widget before timeout expires.

You can use timer to start/stop the widget as you like.