24 October 2018

Useful BBDB v3 auto notes rules

by creichert

BBDB is a plain-text database format for storing contact information that is prominent in the Emacs community. I use BBDB to store and access contact information in various Emacs tools I use like Gnus and org-mode. I chose BBDB because it has a long standing track record and already integrates with tons of modes I use like Gnus. The BBDB elisp library is also trivial to use.

I try my best to use BBDB in a passive way where most insertions & updates are more or less automatic, or only require my to hit y. I often import vCards for new contacts I add to my email account or phone as a starting point.

BBDB has a useful feature called “auto notes” which hooks into your mail agent and automatically annotates BBDB contacts with entries based on rules you set. For example, you could have a rule to note the organization or newsgroup a contact is commonly associated with.

This post describes how some of the BBDB configuration settings in my emacs config work. Keep in mind I will be updating this document as I discover new useful entries.

last updated: 2018-10-23

GitHub username

If receive notification emails from GitHub for repository activity, you can have BBDB automatically save the username’s

(setq bbdb-auto-notes-rules
    '(("X-GitHub-Sender" (".*" github identity nil))))

Gmail delegated inbox user

If you interact with teams using Gmail delegated inboxes, this may be useful.

If receive notification emails from GitHub for repository activity, you can have BBDB automatically save the username’s

(setq bbdb-auto-notes-rules
    '(("X-Google-Sender-Delegation" (".*" delegate identity nil))))

Mailer

I’m nosy and I find email applications fascinating, so I try to get the mailer used by contacts out of interest.

(setq bbdb-auto-notes-rules
    '(("User-Agent" (".*" mailer identity nil))
      ("X-Mailer" (".*" mailer identity nil))
      ("X-Newsreader" (".*" mailer identity nil))))

Face

Identify either the Face or X-Face of a user. I don’t show faces by default in Gnus, but when I do toggle them, I use the Face/X-Face supplied by the contact else I fall-back to their Gravatar using gnus-treat-mail-gravatar.

(setq bbdb-auto-notes-rules
      '(("X-Face" (".+" x-face 0 'replace))
        ("Face"   (".+" face 0 'replace))))

– Christopher Reichert