AERC-TEMPLATES(7)

NAME

aerc-templates - 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 app.

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 was 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}}{{if .ThreadFolded}}{{printf "{%d}" .ThreadCount}}{{end}}{{.Subject}}

    The subject of the email stripped of any Re: and Fwd: prefixes.

        {{.SubjectBase}}

Number
    The message number in the message list (starting from 1).

        {{.Number}}

Threading
    When threading is enabled, these attributes are available in the message list:

    ThreadPrefix
        If the message is part of a thread, this will contain arrows that represent the message tree based on In-Reply-To and References headers.

    ThreadFolded
        Will be true if the message has thread children which are hidden by :fold.

    ThreadCount
        The number of messages in the thread.

    ThreadUnread
        The number of unread messages in the thread.

    ThreadContext
        Will be true if the message is shown for display context only.

    ThreadOrphan
        Will be true if the message has missing ancestors.

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 ""}}

IsReplied, IsForwarded, HasAttachment, IsFlagged, IsRecent, IsUnread, IsMarked, IsDraft
    Individual boolean flags. Not available when composing, replying nor forwarding.

        {{if .IsFlagged}}★{{end}}

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}}

Filename
    The full path of the message file. Not available when composing, replying nor forwarding. For the notmuch backend, it returns a random filename if there are multiple files associated with the message.

Filenames
    A list of the full paths of the files associated with the message. For maildir this is always a list with a single element. Not available when composing, replying nor forwarding.

Any header value
    Any header value of the email.

        {{.Header "x-foo-bar"}}

    Any header values of the original forwarded or replied message:

        {{.OriginalHeader "x-foo-bar"}}
Message-ID
    The message-ID of the message.

        :term b4 am {{.MessageId}}

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}}

Signature
    The signature of the currently selected account obtained from signature-file or signature-cmd.

        {{.Signature}}

Account info
    The current account name:

        {{.Account}}

    The current account's backend:

        {{.AccountBackend}}

    The current account's from address:

        {{.AccountFrom}}
        {{.AccountFrom.Address}}

    Currently selected mailbox folder:

        {{.Folder}}

    Current message counts for all folders:

        {{.Recent}} {{.Unread}} {{.Exists}}
        {{.RUE}}

    The new message status for the account. New messages are such that have arrived since the account tab last had focus. The flag is currently only set when aerc is running at the time of the arrival, i.e. messages that have arrived while aerc was not running will not be indicated.

        {{.HasNew}}

    IANA role of the mailbox, converted to lowercase:

        {{.Role}}

    aerc implements two additional custom roles: A 'query' role is given to folders from a notmuch query-map and 'virtual' indicates a virtual node in the directory tree listing:

        {{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, visual mode), separated with [statusline].separator.

        {{.TrayInfo}}

    Currently pressed key sequence that does not match any key binding and/or is incomplete.

        {{.PendingKeys}}

Terminal

    The following can only be used in the terminal tab title template:

    Bell state indicating whether the bell was rung since the terminal tab last had focus.

        {{.Bell}}

    Title of the terminal. This is typically what the program running in the terminal requests it to be or the name of the command.

        {{.Title}}

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 from a 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 ", "}}

split
    Split a string into a string slice with a separator:

        {{.To | names | join ", " | split ", "}}

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}}

.Attach
    Attaches a file to the message being composed.

        {{.Attach '/usr/libexec/aerc/filters/html'}}

exec
    Execute external command, provide the second argument to its stdin. The command is executed with the same search $PATH than aerc filters (see aerc-config(5) in the FILTERS section for more details).

        {{exec `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 formatted 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.

        {{compactDir .Folder}}

contains
    Checks if a string contains a substring.

        {{contains "<!DOCTYPE html>" .OriginalText}}

hasPrefix
    Checks if a string has a prefix.

        {{hasPrefix "Business" .Folder}}

toLower
    Convert a string to lowercase.

        {{toLower "SPECIAL OFFER!"}}

toUpper
    Convert a string to uppercase.

        {{toUpper "important"}}

replace
    Perform a regular expression substitution on the passed string.

        {{replace `(.+) - .+ at .+..+` `$1` ((index .OriginalFrom 0).Name)}}

head
    Return first n characters from string.

        {{"hello" | head 2}}

tail
    Return last n characters from string.

        {{"hello" | tail 2}}

.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 (case `^([[w-]+]s*)?[(RFC )?PATCH` "cyan")}}
        {{.StyleSwitch (.From | names | join ", ") (case `Tim` "cyan") (case `Robin` "pink-blink") (default "blue")}}

.StyleMap
    Apply user-defined styles (see aerc-stylesets(7)) to elements of a string list. The logic is the same as .StyleSwitch but works on a list of elements. An additional exclude option is available to remove the matching elements from the list.

        {{.StyleMap .Labels (exclude .Folder) (exclude `^spam$`) (case `^inbox$` "red") (case `^Archive/.*` "green") (default "blue") | join " "}}

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 switch/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$` "📥") (case `^Archive/.*` "🗃") (default "📁")}}

map
    Transform a string list into another one. The logic is the same as switch but works on a list of elements. An additional exclude option is available to remove the matching elements from the list.

        {{map .Labels (exclude .Folder) (exclude `^spam$`) (case `^inbox$` "📥") (case `^Archive/.*` "🗃") | join " "}}

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

aerc(1) aerc-config(5)

AUTHORS

Originally created by Drew DeVault and maintained by Robin Jarry who is assisted by other open source contributors. For more information about aerc development, see https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.