invenio-notifications 1.3.1

Overview

The two main customizable components provided by Invenio-Notifications for controlling notifications are: NotificationBuilder and NotificationBackend.

A NotificationBuilder is used to both initially build a Notification object with some context, as well as later on to process this notification to determine the recipients and backend to use for actually sending off the notification.

A NotificationBackend receives the notification data and its recipient, and takes care of rendering the notification and actually sending it off.

Another customizable component is the EntityResolver which is used to resolve entities that are referenced in a notification’s serialized data For instance, an EntityResolver would be used to find the user referenced by the dictionary {"user": "1"} and expand the notification’s data with further information like the user’s email address. However, for most cases the provided defaults should be sufficient here.

from invenio_notifications.backends.email import EmailNotificationBackend
from invenio_records_resources.references.entity_resolvers import ServiceResultResolver
from my_package import MyNotificationBuilder

# the notification builders need to be registered by their type as key, for the
# notification manager (possibly in a background task running in another Python
# interpreter) to look up the right notification builder for processing
NOTIFICATIONS_BUILDERS = {
    MyNotificationBuilder.type: MyNotificationBuilder,
    # ...
}

# notification backends, responsible for actually sending out notifications
NOTIFICATIONS_BACKENDS = {"email": EmailNotificationBackend}

# entity resolvers, used for finding referenced entities like users in the built
# notifications' data
NOTIFICATIONS_ENTITY_RESOLVERS = [
    ServiceResultResolver(service_id="users", type_key="user"),
    ServiceResultResolver(service_id="groups", type_key="group"),
    # ...
]

from invenio_notifications.models import Notification
from invenio_notifications.registry import EntityResolverRegistry
from invenio_notifications.services.builders import NotificationBuilder
from invenio_notifications.services.generators import EmailBackendGenerator, EntityResolverContextGenerator
from invenio_users_resources.notifications.filters import UserPreferencesRecipientFilter
from invenio_users_resources.notifications.generators import UserRecipient

class MyRequestNotificationBuilder(NotificationBuilder):
    """Base notification builder for "accept" events on my custom request type."""

    type = "my-request-type.accept"

    @classmethod
    def build(cls, request, result):
        """Build notification with request context."""
        return Notification(
            type=cls.type,

            # the context is used for determining the recipients, and is also
            # available for rendering the notification template
            context={
                "request": EntityResolverRegistry.reference_entity(request),
                "result": result,
            },
        )

    # first resolve the referenced request and expand the `notification.context` data;
    # afterwards expand the referenced creator, topic, and receiver
    context = [
        EntityResolverContextGenerator(key="request"),
        EntityResolverContextGenerator(key="request.created_by"),
        EntityResolverContextGenerator(key="request.topic"),
        EntityResolverContextGenerator(key="request.receiver"),
    ]

    # create a `Recipient` instance from the resolved request creator
    # (the other expanded entities may be relevant in template rendering)
    recipients = [
        UserRecipient(key="request.created_by"),
    ]

    # filter out recipients that have notifications disabled
    recipient_filters = [
        UserPreferencesRecipientFilter(),
    ]

    # use the email backend, which will render e.g. "my-request-type.accept.jinja"
    recipient_backends = [
        EmailBackendGenerator(),
    ]

# ...
# the builder needs to be registered in the `NOTIFICATIONS_BUILDERS` config;
# here's how the builder would be typically used in request actions:
# ...

import random
from invenio_requests.customizations.actions import AcceptAction
from invenio_notifications.services.uow import NotificationOp

class MyRequestTypeAcceptAction(AcceptAction):
    """Accept action for my custom request type, sending a notification."""

    def execute(self, identity, uow):
        """Calculate an important result on "accept" and send a notification."""
        result = random.randint(0, 100)
        uow.register(
            NotificationOp(
                MyRequestNotificationBuilder.build(
                    request=self.request,
                    result=result,
                )
            )
        )
        super().execute(identity, uow)

# ...
# further code for the customized request type and its registration is omitted
# ...

Usage in the Invenio ecosystem

This package is used heavily in Invenio-Requests (or rather in the packages that implement requests) to send notifications to involved users whenever something happens with a request.

Generally, each request action generates a Notification via a dedicated NotificationBuilder and registers it to the action’s UnitOfWork via a NotificationOp. Upon successful completion of the transaction, that will schedule a background task where the NotificationManager processes the notification. Since the background task runs in another Python interpreter, the manager needs to look up the appropriate NotificationBuilder to use for processing the notification via the notification.type. The builder is then used to evaluate the recipients of the notification and the backend (like email) to use to finally render and send the notifications.

Concrete implementations of notification builders for various request actions can be found in Invenio-RDM-Records.