aerc-templates - Man Page
template file specification for aerc(1)
Synopsis
aerc uses the go text/template package for the template parsing. Refer to the go text/template documentation for the general syntax. The template syntax described below can be used for message template files and for dynamic formatting of some UI widgets.
Template files are composed of headers, followed by a newline, followed by the body text.
Example:
X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett Hello, Greetings, Chuck
If you have a template that doesn't add any header, it must be preceded by a newline, to avoid parsing parts of the body as header text.
All headers defined in the template will have precedence over any headers that are initialized by aerc (e.g. Subject, To, From, Cc) when composing a new message, forwarding or replying.
Message Data
The following data can be used in templates. Though they are not all available always.
- Addresses
An array of mail.Address. That can be used to add sender or recipient names to the template.
- {{.From}}: List of senders.
- {{.Peer}}: List of senders or To recipients if the message is from you.
- {{.To}}: List of To recipients. Not always Available.
- {{.ReplyTo}}: List of ReplyTo recipients. Not always Available.
- {{.Cc}}: List of Cc recipients. Not always Available.
- {{.Bcc}}: List of Cc recipients. Not always Available.
- {{.OriginalFrom}}: List of senders of the original message. Available for quoted reply and forward.
Example:
Get the name of the first sender.
{{(index .From 0).Name}} {{index (.From | names) 0}}
Get the email address of the first sender.
{{(index .From 0).Address}}
- Date and Time
The date and time information is always available and can be easily formatted.
- {{.Date}}: Date and time information when the compose window is opened.
- {{.OriginalDate}}: Date and time when the original message of received. Available for quoted reply and forward.
To format the date fields, dateFormat and .Local are provided. Refer to the Template Functions section for details.
- Subject
The subject of the email (ThreadPrefix will be empty unless threading is enabled).
{{.ThreadPrefix}}{{.Subject}}
The subject of the email stripped of any Re: and Fwd: prefixes.
{{.SubjectBase}}
- Flags
List of message flags, not available when composing, replying nor forwarding. This is a list of strings that may be converted to a single string with join.
{{.Flags | join ""}}
- Labels
Message labels (for example notmuch tags). Not available when composing, replying nor forwarding. This is a list of strings that may be converted to a single string with join.
{{.Labels | join " "}}
- Size
The size of the message in bytes. Not available when composing, replying nor forwarding. It can be formatted with humanReadable.
{{.Size | humanReadable}}
- Any header value
Any header value of the email.
{{.Header "x-foo-bar"}}
Any header values of the original forwared or replied message:
{{.OriginalHeader "x-foo-bar"}}
- MIME Type
MIME Type is available for quoted reply and forward.
- {{.OriginalMIMEType}}: MIME type info of quoted mail part. Usually text/plain or text/html.
- Original Message
When using quoted reply or forward, the original message is available in a field called OriginalText.
{{.OriginalText}}
- Account info
The current account name:
{{.Account}}
Currently selected mailbox folder:
{{.Folder}}
Current message counts for all folders:
{{.Recent}} {{.Unread}} {{.Exists}} {{.RUE}}
IANA role of the mailbox, converted to lowercase. aerc uses one custom role: 'query', which is given to mailboxes from a notmuch query-map
{{if eq .Role "query"}}{{...}}{{else}}{{...}}{{end}}
Current message counts for specific folders:
{{.Recent "inbox"}} {{.Unread "inbox" "aerc/pending"}} {{.Exists "archive" "spam" "foo/baz" "foo/bar"}} {{.RUE "inbox"}}
Status line
The following data will only be available in the status line templates:
Connection state.
{{.Connected}} {{.ConnectionInfo}}
General status information (e.g. filter, search) separated with [statusline].separator.
{{.ContentInfo}}
Combination of {{.ConnectionInfo}} and {{.StatusInfo}} separated with [statusline].separator.
{{.StatusInfo}}
General on/off information (e.g. passthrough, threading, sorting), separated with [statusline].separator.
{{.TrayInfo}}
Currently pressed key sequence that does not match any key binding and/or is incomplete.
{{.PendingKeys}}
Template Functions
Besides the standard functions described in go's text/template documentation, aerc provides the following additional functions:
- wrap
Wrap the original text to the specified number of characters per line.
{{wrap 72 .OriginalText}}
- quote
Prepends each line with "> ".
{{quote .OriginalText}}
- trimSignature
Removes the signature froma passed in mail. Quoted signatures are kept as they are.
{{trimSignature .OriginalText}}
- join
Join the provided list of strings with a separator:
{{.To | names | join ", "}}
- names
Extracts the names part from a mail.Address list. If there is no name available, the mbox (email address without @domain) is returned instead.
{{.To | names | join ", "}} {{index (.To | names) 0}}
- firstnames
Extracts the first names part from a mail.Address list. If there is no name available, the short mbox (start of email address without @domain) is returned instead.
{{.To | firstnames | join ", "}} {{index (.To | firstnames) 0}}
- initials
Extracts the initials from the names part from a mail.Address list. If there is no name available, the first letter of the email address is returned instead.
{{.To | initials | join ", "}} {{index (.To | initials) 0}}
- emails
Extracts the addresses part from a mail.Address list.
{{.To | emails | join ", "}} {{index (.To | emails) 0}}
- mboxes
Extracts the mbox part from a mail.Address list (i.e. smith from smith@example.com).
{{.To | mboxes | join ", "}} {{index (.To | mboxes) 0}}
- shortmboxes
Extracts the short mbox part from a mail.Address list (i.e. smith from smith.and.wesson@example.com).
{{.To | shortmboxes | join ", "}} {{index (.To | shortmboxes) 0}}
- persons
Formats a list of mail.Address into a list of strings containing the human readable form of RFC5322 (e.g. Firstname Lastname <email@address.tld>).
{{.To | persons | join ", "}} {{index (.To | persons) 0}}
- exec
Execute external command, provide the second argument to its stdin.
{{exec `/usr/libexec/aerc/filters/html` .OriginalText}}
- .Local
Convert the date to the local timezone as specified by the locale.
{{.Date.Local}}
- dateFormat
Format date and time according to the format passed as the second argument. The format must be specified according to go's time package format.
{{dateFormat .Date "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006"}}
You can also use the .DateAutoFormat method to format the date according to *-time*format settings:
{{.DateAutoFormat .OriginalDate.Local}}
- now
Return the current date as a golang time.Time object that can be formated with dateFormat.
{{dateFormat now "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006"}}
- humanReadable
Return the human readable form of an integer value.
{{humanReadable 3217653721}}
- cwd
Return the current working directory with the user home dir replaced by ~.
{{cwd}}
- compactDir
Reduce a directory path into a compact form. The directory name will be split with / and each part will be reduced to the first letter in its name: INBOX/01_WORK/PROJECT will become I/W/PROJECT.
{{compactPath .Folder}}
- .Style
Apply a user-defined style (see aerc-stylesets(7)) to a string.
{{.Style .Account "red"}} {{.Style .ThreadPrefix "thread"}}{{.Subject}}
- .StyleSwitch
Apply a user-defined style (see aerc-stylesets(7)) to a string if it matches one of the associated regular expressions. If the string does not match any of the expressions, leave it unstyled.
{{.StyleSwitch .Subject (`^([[w-]+]s*)?[(RFC )?PATCH` "cyan")}} {{.StyleSwitch (.From | names | join ", ") (case `Tim` "cyan") (case `Robin` "pink-blink") (default "blue")}}
- version
Returns the version of aerc, which can be useful for things like X-Mailer.
X-Mailer: aerc {{version}}
- match
Check if a string matches a regular expression. This is intended for use in conditional control flow:
{{if match .Folder `.*/Archive-[0-9]+`}}{{humanReadable .Unread}}{{end}}
- switch
Do swich/case/default control flows. The switch value is compared with regular expressions. If none of the case/default arms match, an empty string is returned.
{{switch .Folder (case `^INBOX$` "š„") (case `^Archive/.*` "š") (default "š")}}
- Function chaining
All of the template functions can be chained together if needed.
Example: Automatic HTML parsing for text/html mime type messages
{{if eq .OriginalMIMEType "text/html"}} {{exec `/usr/libexec/aerc/filters/html` .OriginalText | wrap 72 | quote}} {{else}} {{wrap 72 .OriginalText | trimSignature | quote}} {{end}}
See Also
Authors
Originally created by Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> and maintained by Robin Jarry <robin@jarry.cc> who is assisted by other open source contributors. For more information about aerc development, see https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.
Referenced By
aerc(1), aerc-config(5), aerc-stylesets(7).