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beFound! 0.1

A sophisticated person database based on PHP, Python and PostgreSQL by Lennart Poettering 2001.

Features

1. Clean web interface
2. Mutt interface, for executing beFound-queries from within mutt
3. Weekly birthday-reminder using cron

Prerequisites

1. Working PHP-enabled web server
2. Working PostgreSQL 7.x database
3. For the mutt-interface you need:
   • mutt >= 1.2
   • python >= 2.0
   • PyPgSQL Python2-module for postgresql-database-access
4. For the weekly birthday reminder you need:
   • cron
   • python >= 2.0
   • PyPgSQL Python2-module for postgresql-database-access

Installation:

1. You have to create a database for beFound! by importing befound.sql and befound-funcs.sql into PostgreSQL.
2. You should copy all PHP-files of the distribution into a directory of your web server, which interpretes PHP-codes.
3. You should edit befound.inc.php to reflect the database connection (user, database, and so on) you want to use. (It would be a good idea, if you'd create a new PostgreSQL user for the beFound! system.)

   (No, you won't be able to use the default-password stored in that file to connect to my personal befound-database. Forget it.)

4. The web part should work now. To get the mutt-connectivity to work you should edit befound-mutt.py and adjust the database connection parameters like you already did in the PHP sources.
5. Than edit your muttrc and include the following line:

   set query_command = "$HOME/path/to/befound/befound-mutt.py '%s'"

   Than you will be able to do a befound-query from within

6. For the weekly birthday remainder you should edit the befound-birthday.py scripts to match you database connection parameters like you did for python-mutt.py.
7. Than edit your crontab. (via crontab -e) and put a line like to following in it:

   @weekly $HOME/path/to/befound/befound-birthday.py | mail -s "Birthdays in the Next 14 Days" lennart

8. That's it.

   Development

As you probably noticed beFound! is not documented very well in source. beFound! is not much more than a privately used address-book, developed because all existing ones had a very bad design. Because I thought that other people could be interested in it as well, I open sourced it, hoping that other people would join development and enhance the application. Feel free to make patches and adjust the program to you wishes, as beFound! is free software licensed under GPL.

Most of the in-source comments are german, as this is my native tongue. The webinterface is english.

8/25/2001, Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.de>, Hamburg