Email newsletter generator

A script used to generate a HTML email newsletter from a template HTML file and some markdown files.

The script is based on Warwick Computer Science Society's script, found here

Requirements:

Python 3

The Markdown Python module (see below).

Installation

Clone this repo:

  git clone https://github.com/OscarTopliss/newsletter-generator

Install the requirements (reccommended method using a virtual environment):

  python3 -m venv .venv
  source .venv/bin/activate
  pip install -r requirements.txt

Whenever you run the script, make sure to run source .venv/bin/activate beforehand.

Usage

The script take your specified markdown file and inserts it into a provided HTML template. The template needs to have {{ content }} somewhere in it, as this is what will be replaced by the markdown file.

Sections

You can split your newsletter into multiple sections. This is useful for sections which don't often change, e.g. sponsorships, signatures. To do this, {{ section }} somewhere in your main markdown file. The script will look for a file called section.md, and insert it into the newsletter before converting it to HTML.

Note: Sections can't currently be embedded inside other sections. e.g. you can't have {{ section1 }} in your main markdown file, and {{ section2 }} in section1.md.

You can speicify where the script should look for section files with the -s or --section flag.

Embedded HTML

You can embed normal HTML tags into markdown, which will be kept when the markdown is converted into HTML with the script. It's a good idea to try this if things aren't formatting the way you expect in the newsletter.

Flags

-h, --help Outputs a help message, detailing usage and flags.

-o, --output The output file. By default, the same as the file but with a .html extension.

-t,--template The template file. By default the script looks for template.html

-s, --sections The folder/directory containing any markdown files for specific sections. Checks the current directory by default.

Example usage

python3 generate.py newsletter.md
python3 generate.py newsletter.md -o output.html
python3 genreate.py newsletter.md -t knit-soc.html -s ./sections