TriNetre - Archive for May 27, 2003

(no longer updated)

I use the CalendarScript calendering system to keep track of some important dates, specifically not related to my work. It is just the tool I wanted, except that it did not support automatic reminder by email. The tool CSRemind fills that gap by providing a good plugin.

However, a couple of bugs stills seems to exists in version 1.05 released on 12/23/02. To be frank, some of the bugs I came across virtually prevents CSRemind from doing anything useful. But the version seems to have been around for some time now. So, I am not very sure whether I am reading everything wrong. Anyway, I am just putting this down so that if someone else finds similar problems, you can try these steps out to correct it.

1. Bug 1 - In the file csr_run.pl, that is used to run the cron job to send the emails, the third line after the initial comments goes like:
   $csreminderfile = "data/cs_reminders.pl";
   This does not work when you setup a cron job, because cron jobs are not run in the same directory as csremind. So, when the csr_run.pl script tries to find the data/cs_reminders.pl data_file, it croaks an error. Change this line to:
   $csreminderfile = "FULL_PATH_OF_CSREMIND/data/cs_reminders.pl";
2. Bug 2 - When you subscribe for an event notification, the perl script display_after_getEvent.pl gets called. In particular the function display_after_getEvent gets called with the parameter set_reminder. So, look for the line:
   if ($csr_q->param('set_reminder')){
   This is the portion which is called. Inside the code section, the reminder data file is updated, with a call to csr_write_file function. However, what is surprising is that there is no call to the function csr_getEventInfo before the calle to csr_write_file. This the variables that should have contained details of the event (like title and description) is empty and will not be written in the reminder data file. Hence the emails sent will have no info! Solution, just add:
   &csr_getEventInfo; just before &csr_write_file.
3. The "description" does not get written into the reminder data file! Look inside the function csr_write_file. A line goes:
   print FILE "$csr_email\t$evdate\t$ndate\t$csr_link\t$csr_title\t$desc\n";
   The problem is that the description data of the event is stored in the variable $csr_desc and not $desc! So change the line to:
   print FILE "$csr_email\t$evdate\t$ndate\t$csr_link\t$csr_title\t$csr_desc\n";

Hope things work now. It did for me. I have sent an email to the author of the plugin so hopefully he will let me know whether I am wrong in the bug analysis.


“I judge a woman and a horse by the same criteria: legs, head and rear end.” - Elizabeth Arden


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