Notmuch Address Lookup tool — in C

This is an address lookup tool similar to the addrlookup one found in the (apparently unmaintained) Vala Notmuch binding, using the Notmuch database as source.

The one and only feature is accepting a string as first argument, and it will use the Notmuch database to output the names and e-mail addresses of the people you have exchanged e-mails with, most used ones first. This works neatly as address completer for the Notmuch Emacs interface.

One more thing: I plan to keep the tool up-to-date when new Notmuch releases change the API of the library. Precisely the reasons why this small project was started are:

• The Go implementation included with Notmuch insists in outputting all the text in lowercase. Plus, requires a working Go development setup to build it.

• There used to be similar tools included with Notmuch, written in Vala and Python, but they have been removed due to lack of maintenance.

notmuch address

Starting with version 0.19 a new notmuch address subcommand is available, which can be used to search for e-mail addresses as well. While similar, notmuch-addrlookup-c may still be preferred because:

• The output format can be set to Mutt-compatible, which many existing tools know how to handle.

• The output can also be set to aerc compatible.

• It automatically searches for addresses in the To:, Cc:, Bcc:, and From: message headers, and sorts them out by most frequently seen. This usually renders more relevant results.

Building

Make sure you have the following installed, plus their development packages:

• libnotmuch — Included with Notmuch.
• GLib — It is a dependency of Notmuch as well.
• pkg-config
• GNU Make and a working C compiler.

Then just build and install it:

make
sudo cp notmuch-addrlookup /usr/local/bin

Using

You can check that the program works by invoking from a shell. The only argument it takes is a string, which is searched for in the e-mail addresses contained in the headers of the messages indexed by Notmuch. Example output (names and addresses are not real):

% notmuch-addrlookup peter
Peter Jones <[email protected]>
John Peters <[email protected]>
Peter Tosh <[email protected]>
Noren Petersen <[email protected]>
%

Vim

The plug-in vim-notmuch-addrlookup adds completion of e-mail addresses via notmuch-addrlookup-c (by default by hitting <Ctrl-X><Ctrl-O>) when composing an e-mail.

Emacs UI

The Emacs Notmuch UI can be configured to use the tool for completing addresses when composing.

Mutt

The Mutt UA can be configured to use notmuch-addrlookup by setting the following options:

set query_command="notmuch-addrlookup --format=mutt '%s'"

aerc

The aerc can be configured to use notmuch-addrlookup by setting the following options:

address-book-cmd=notmuch-addrlookup --format=aerc %s

alot

The alot MUA can be configured to use notmuch-addrlookup, using an [accounts] section in the configuration file similar to this:

[accounts]
  [[youraccountname]]
    realname = Your Name
    address = [email protected]
    ...
    [[[abook]]]
      type = shellcommand
      regexp = '^(?P<email>[^@]+@[^\t]+)\t+(?P<name>[^\t]+)'
      command = notmuch-addrlookup --format=mutt
      ignorecase = True

License

This software is distributed under the terms of the MIT license:

Copyright (c) 2014 Adrian Perez de Castro <[email protected]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.