#emailbook

A minimalistic address book for e-mails only.

#Installation

Clone this repository:

git clone https://git.sr.ht/~maxgyver83/emailbook

Or download only emailbook. If you like, copy emailbook to a directory which is in your PATH (p.e. $HOME/.local/bin/ or /usr/local/bin/). (Otherwise, use always the full path.)

#Usage

#Command line

#Add a new entry like this:

emailbook ~/emailbook.txt --add 'jd : John Doe <john.doe@example.com>'

Entries should look like MAILBOX or ALIAS : MAILBOX.

• ALIAS is your personal abbreviation (optional).
• See How a mailbox looks like (=optional display name plus e-mail address).

#Search a recipient:

emailbook ~/emailbook.txt --search 'john'
emailbook ~/emailbook.txt --key 'jd'
emailbook ~/emailbook.txt --value 'john'

--search looks both at keys (=aliases) and values. --key and --value limit the search accordingly.

#Add all senders/recipients from an e-mail to your address book:

cat test/sample1 | emailbook ~/emailbook.txt --parse --all

This skips p.e. "John Doe" <jd@example.com> when the address book already contains the same entry without double quotes (and vice versa).

Plain e-mail addresses are wrapped in angle brackets automatically.

E-mails like noreply@example.com are always ignored.

#aerc

emailbook might work for other e-mail clients but it was tested only with aerc.

#Use emailbook for autocompletion of e-mail senders/recipients:

Add this line to ~/.config/aerc/aerc.conf, [compose] section:

address-book-cmd=emailbook /home/user/emailbook.txt --search "%s"

Note: aerc adds double quotes and angle brackets automatically during autocompletion.

#Add binding to add all senders/recipients from current e-mail:

Add this line to ~/.config/aerc/binds.conf, [view] section:

aa = :pipe -m emailbook /home/user/emailbook.txt --parse --all<Enter>

Just an example. aa stands for "add all".

You could also use a separate binding for adding only the sender:

af = :pipe -m emailbook /home/user/emailbook.txt --parse --from<Enter>

#How a mailbox looks like

A mailbox is an e-mail address plus optionally a display name.

E-mail senders/recipients should be written like these examples:

• john.doe@example.com
• <john.doe@example.com>
• John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
• "Doe, Joe" <john.doe@example.com>

Normally, a mailbox is composed of two parts: (1) an optional display name that indicates the name of the recipient (which can be a person or a system) that could be displayed to the user of a mail application, and (2) an addr-spec address enclosed in angle brackets ("<" and ">"). There is an alternate simple form of a mailbox where the addr-spec address appears alone, without the recipient's name or the angle brackets.

RFC 5322, Section 3.4

Double-quote the display name if it contains other characters than:

ALPHA DIGIT ! # $ % & ' * + - / = ? ^ _ ` { | } ~

#Prior art

emailbook is heavily inspired by/similar to ~renerocksai/aercbook. But there are some differences:

emailbook ...

• is simpler (about 150 lines of POSIX shell script vs over 1000 lines of zig code),
• doesn't add aliases automatically,
• strips single quotes around display names (both 'xxx' and "'xxx'"),
• strips redundant display names (p.e. "john@example.com" <john@example.com>),
• skips noreply entries during parsing,
• decodes encoded names like =?UTF-8?Q?M=C3=BCller?= (→ Müller),
• only returns relevant entries for queries.

Now, this applies also to aercbook:

• parses all recipients, not only the first line,
• decodes encoded names like =?UTF-8?B?5byg5LiJ?= (→ 张三).

Also see emailbook-janet: A minimalistic address book for e-mails only (mainly for aerc) for emailbook reimplemented in Janet. It's faster (but not as fast as aercbook). See emailbook.janet (including benchmark) · janet-lang/janet · Discussion #1419 for a benchmark.