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Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

parser.zapier.com

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Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#21

Post by bryanh »

baghali wrote: post #16

Is it possible to extract repeating patterns? example would be extracting repo name, number of stars, language and project description from GitHub Archive daily digests. sample mail: http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=439aa16a39e4b10e0b65ff2e...

It is not possible to extract something (today) that would be generated inside a for loop. I'd be curious if anyone has ideas on how you might do that.

If you need support for more complex emails and extraction rules, you might look into using http://mailparser.io/.

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#22

Post by funkiee »

bryanh wrote: post #10
nswanberg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice! This looks very useful and easy to use. How much boilerplate text do you need on either side of a token in order to identify it? Put another way, how much can the template emails vary? If the template format changes is there any sort of notification? Did you use the simplest implementation that could work or is this much more complicate than it looks?

It can actually get pretty complex, the technique we're using is a wacky hacky hodgepodge of Google diff-match-patch that works surprisingly well! If you run into any that don't work, just let us know and we can add it to the test suite and figure it out.

We've got some particularly complicated html RegEx for Email parsing at our company. We manually write new ones for new email layouts as we get them. I'd be interested in any information on how you're solving the issue, as I love how you've tackled it at least on the UI end.

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#24

Post by djyaz1200 »

nostromo wrote: post #12

Can someone share a use case? It seems cool for... something . edit: thanks all, very interesting.

Say you want LinkedIn messages to import to your CRM but they don't offer integration. Zapier the email notifications for your application. It's API by force, if companies don't let you in the front door just use another entrance.

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#25

Post by jcampbell1 »

nostromo wrote: post #12

Can someone share a use case? It seems cool for... something . edit: thanks all, very interesting.

I am playing with it now. I want to have my EZPass (RFID auto tolls) statements sent to my inbox. Right now I get an email with a url, then I have to type a PIN code, just to see my monthly statement.

I am too lazy to do it every month, but it would be nice the statements just appeared in my inbox.

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#27

Post by bryanh »

funkiee wrote: post #22
bryanh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can actually get pretty complex, the technique we're using is a wacky hacky hodgepodge of Google diff-match-patch that works surprisingly well! If you run into any that don't work, just let us know and we can add it to the test suite and figure it out.

We've got some particularly complicated html RegEx for Email parsing at our company. We manually write new ones for new email layouts as we get them. I'd be interested in any information on how you're solving the issue, as I love how you've tackled it at least on the UI end.

Sure! In very broad strokes:

First, download yourself a copy of Google's diff-match-patch.

Second, make a template for the email you have (think "Your shipment will be delivered {{date}}. Thank you!" vs. the original raw email "Your shipment will be delivered 2014-04-04. Thank you!").

Third, run it through diff-match-patch.

Forth, walk over the change tree and record the insertion (1), a deletion (-1) or equality (0) transformations (one as keys the other as values).

(There are a lot of edge cases to handle between the forth and fifth step, but test cases make those pretty obvious (if not very frustrating.)

Fifth, collate the keys/values into a dictionary and do some last minute cleanups.

We will be documenting a REST API so you can use parser.zapier.com directly, and it is pretty easy to forward emails automatically to our robot (so you can conceivably avoid writing anything at all and just use the app).

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#28

Post by nathanathan »

lugg wrote: post #11

Would love to see an open source tool like this for parsing general text / csv / fixedwidth / html in a similar way. Very nifty concept.

I made an open source tool that does something like this using a modified version of the Levenshtein distance algorithm: https://github.com/nathanathan/fuzzyTemplateMatcher

Here's a demo you can play around with: http://nathanathan.com/fuzzyTemplateMatcher/

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#29

Post by saganus »

Could anyone more versed in being a sysadmin comment on using this for logging?

I know there are things like logstash, but this one seems like something that could be complementary. What about feeding log files for known events, and, I don't know, have a pretty dashboard will all the stats or something? what other use for this feature plus logging can you think of?

Disclaimer: I'm currently thinking of a way of doing logging and security audits to some CA server I'm about to configure, so right now everything looks like a nail I guess...

Re: Zapier Email Parser: Extract Text From Automated Emails

#30

Post by mjhea0 »

WadeF wrote: post #14
nostromo wrote: post #12

Can someone share a use case? It seems cool for... something . edit: thanks all, very interesting.

One way we've seen it used is to parse out info from receipt emails into a spreadsheet or expense tool.

awesome use case.

how about -

1. Creating your own support desk 2. Automatically adding tasks to a calendar 3. Web scraping 4. Basic data collection

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