Custom FORM Notifications

Overview

• Image Support: Yes
• Attachment Support: Yes
• Message Character Limits:
  • Body: 32768

Introduction

This is just a custom Notification that allows you to have this tool post to a web server as a simple FORM (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). This is useful for those who want to be notified via their own custom methods.

The payload will include a body, title, version, and type in it’s response. You can add more (see below for details).

The type will be one of the following:

• info: An informative type message
• success: A successful report
• failure: A failure report
• warning: A warning report

Syntax

Valid syntax is as follows:

• form://{hostname}
• form://{hostname}:{port}
• form://{user}:@{hostname}
• form://{user}:@{hostname}:{port}
• form://{user}:{password}@{hostname}
• form://{user}:{password}@{hostname}:{port}

The secure versions:

• forms://{hostname}
• forms://{hostname}:{port}
• forms://{user}:@{hostname}
• forms://{user}:@{hostname}:{port}
• forms://{user}:{password}@{hostname}
• forms://{user}:{password}@{hostname}:{port}

Parameter Breakdown

Variable	Required	Description
hostname	Yes	The Web Server’s hostname
port	No	The port our Web server is listening on. By default the port is 80 for form:// and 443 for all forms:// references.
user	No	If you’re system is set up to use HTTP-AUTH, you can provide username for authentication to it.
password	No	If you’re system is set up to use HTTP-AUTH, you can provide password for authentication to it.
method	No	Optionally specify the server http method; possible options are post, put, get, delete, patch, and head. By default if no method is specified then post is used.
attach-as	No	Optionally override the meta filename set when there are attachments. Each attachment by default gets posted as file01, file02, etc. There have been use-cases where someone’s end point expects the meta name (where the file is found on the HTTP request) to be named something specific such as document. Utilize this over-ride to accomplish such a feat. Also use the * character to allow the numbering. Hence ?attach-as=meta* would cause Apprise to store the files as meta01, meta02, etc.

Note:: If you include file attachments; each one is concatenated into the same single post to the upstream server. The Content-Type header request also changes from application/x-www-form-urlencoded to multipart/form-data in this case.

Global Parameters

Variable	Description
overflow	This parameter can be set to either split, truncate, or upstream. This determines how Apprise delivers the message you pass it. By default this is set to upstream 👉 upstream: Do nothing at all; pass the message exactly as you received it to the service. 👉 truncate: Ensure that the message will fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit. If more information was passed then the defined limit, the overhead information is truncated. 👉 split: similar to truncate except if the message doesn’t fit within the service’s documented upstream message limit, it is split into smaller chunks and they are all delivered sequentially there-after.
format	This parameter can be set to either text, html, or markdown. Some services support the ability to post content by several different means. The default of this varies (it can be one of the 3 mentioned at any time depending on which service you choose). You can optionally force this setting to stray from the defaults if you wish. If the service doesn’t support different types of transmission formats, then this field is ignored.
verify	External requests made to secure locations (such as through the use of https) will have certificates associated with them. By default, Apprise will verify that these certificates are valid; if they are not then no notification will be sent to the source. In some occasions, a user might not have a certificate authority to verify the key against or they trust the source; in this case you will want to set this flag to no. By default it is set to yes.
cto	This stands for Socket Connect Timeout. This is the number of seconds Requests will wait for your client to establish a connection to a remote machine (corresponding to the connect()) call on the socket. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
rto	This stands for Socket Read Timeout. This is the number of seconds the client will wait for the server to send a response. The default value is 4.0 seconds.
emojis	Enable Emoji support (such as providing :+1: would translate to 👍). By default this is set to no. Note: Depending on server side settings, the administrator has the power to disable emoji support at a global level; but default this is not the case.
tz	Identify the IANA Time Zone Database you wish to operate as. By default this is detected based on the configuration the server hosting Apprise is running on. You can set this to things like America/Toronto, or any other properly formated Timezone describing your area.

Examples

Send a FORM Based web request to our web server listening on port 80:

# Assuming our {hostname} is my.server.local
apprise form://my.server.local

Header Manipulation

Some users may require special HTTP headers to be present when they post their data to their server. This can be accomplished by just sticking a plus symbol (+) in front of any parameter you specify on your URL string.

# Below would set the header:
#    X-Token: abcdefg
#
# Assuming our {hostname} is localhost
# Assuming our {port} is 8080
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   "form://localhost:8080/path/?+X-Token=abcdefg"

# Multiple headers just require more entries defined:
# Below would set the headers:
#    X-Token: abcdefg
#    X-Apprise: is great
#
# Assuming our {hostname} is localhost
# Assuming our {port} is 8080
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   "form://localhost:8080/path/?+X-Token=abcdefg&+X-Apprise=is%20great"

GET Parameter Manipulation

Some users may require GET parameters to be part of their POST. Any parameters you pass onto the Apprise command line are interpreted by Apprise itself as options/actions you wish to perform (such as changing method=update, or cto=3). To have Apprise ignore what was specified and past the content as-is upstream, you just need to prefix your entries with a minus (-) symbol.

# The below for example would post to http://localhost:8000?token=abcdefg
#
# The `-` symbol will get stripped off when the upstream post takes place
# Apprise knows not to do anything with the argument at all and pass it along as is.
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   "form://localhost:8080/?-token=abcdefg"

# If you want to pass more then one element, just chain them:
# The below would send a a POST to:
#  https://example.ca/my/path?key1=value1&key2=value2
#
apprise -vv -t "Test Message Title" -b "Test Message Body" \
   "forms://example.ca/my/path?-key1=value1&-key2=value2"

Attach-As Over-Ride Options

This section expands further on the ?attach-as= override option.

Simply add this to the URL: such as:

# apply the override of `file{:02d}` to be `document`
bin/apprise -vvvv 'forms://webhook.site/<webhook>?attach-as=document' \
   --attach test/var/apprise-test.png -b test

In order to support other variations, you can do :

# Set the file array object in the request as `{:02d}meta`
bin/apprise -vvvv 'forms://webhook.site/<webhook>?attach-as=*meta' \
   --attach test/var/apprise-test.png -b test

# Set the file array object in the request as `meta{:02d}`
bin/apprise -vvvv 'forms://webhook.site/<webhook>?attach-as=meta*' \
   --attach test/var/apprise-test.png -b test

# Set the file array object in the request as `meta{:02d}file`
bin/apprise -vvvv 'forms://webhook.site/<webhook>?attach-as=meta*file' \
   --attach test/var/apprise-test.png -b test