Bradism. : secret

This year the family is doing a secret santa, instead of the regular gifts-for-everyone approach. I think it's a good idea as I only have to think up one amazing present instead of seven.

There was talk about who would do the randomizing of names, which ruined the surprise for that one person. I suggested that the internet could probably provide that service, but then hesitated at the thought of putting all our email addresses into a random website.

I decided to write my own secret santa service instead. At first I wrote it in PHP - like this website is - and spent a good hour trying to remember basic PHP concepts like "do lines have to end with semi-colons?" and "how do you print to standard out?". I used to PHP errday, so this made me feel bad. I reasoned that I forgot all my PHP from 2010 because I moved to python after that. I figured I would write secret santa in Python.

Then I spent another few hours trying to remember basic python syntax, and debugging issues. It took me about the same amount of time to remember how to print formatted strings as it did to finalise the script.

But, I ran it, and it worked, so I figured I would share it on my journal as evidence that I still do some scripting occasionally. I even formatted it with CSS to be easier to read... This also took at least an hour to do...

##########################

###    SECRET SANTA    ###

###  Bradism.com 2016  ###

##########################

# Set Values Below:

SMTP_DETAILS = {  # Available from your Webhost or ISP

   'SMTPserver': 'your.smtp.com',

   'sender': 'YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS',

   'username': 'SMTP_USER_NAME',

   'password': 'YOUR_SMTP_PASSWORD'

}
# Create a dictionary of participants, adding their name, email address and a description of what they might want/not want.

# The "gift" field will be included as HTML, so all HTML tags are valid and make sure to escape double-quotes

giftees = {}

giftees['Brad'] = {'email': 'brad@example.com', 'gift': "Yogurt, Cereal, Fruit.<br />No cats!"}

giftees['Dwight'] = {'email': 'dwight@atlanta.com', 'gift': "I'd like to shoot more threes and have someone yell \"Dwight for THREEEE\" even if it looks like missing."}

giftees['Rajon'] = {'email': 'big_game_rondo@gmail.com', 'gift': "<ol><li>Connect 4 Opponents</li><li>A call from Paul Pierce</li></ol>"}

giftees['Gortat'] = {'email': 'marcin@hotmail.com.com', 'gift': "I miss Stan Van Gundy. Also, shaving products."}
#######################################################

### Custom Settings Finished                        ###

### Shouldn't need to edit anything below this line ###

#######################################################
# Mail Subroutine

def send_mail ( destination_addr, addressee_name, target_name, target_requests, SMTP_DETAILS ): 

    import sys

    import os

    import re
    sender =     SMTP_DETAILS['sender']

    destination = [ destination_addr ]
    subject="Hi %s - Here's Your Secret Santa" % addressee_name

    content="<p>Hi %s</p><p>Your Secret Santa is <b>%s!</b></p><p>Their Likes/Requests are:</p><p>%s</p><p>Good Luck and remember, keep it a secret!</p><p>Love, Santa</p>" % (addressee_name, target_name, target_requests)
    from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP       # this invokes the secure SMTP protocol (port 465, uses SSL)

    # old version

    from email.mime.text import MIMEText
    try:

        msg = MIMEText(content, 'html')

        msg['Subject']= subject

        msg['From']   = sender # some SMTP servers will do this automatically, not all
        conn = SMTP(SMTP_DETAILS['SMTPserver'])

        conn.set_debuglevel(False)

        conn.login( SMTP_DETAILS['username'], SMTP_DETAILS['password'] )

        try:

            conn.sendmail(sender, destination_addr, msg.as_string())

        finally:

            conn.quit()
    except Exception, exc:

        sys.exit( "mail failed; %s" % str(exc) ) # give a error message
# Recursive People Shuffler        

def shuffle_people ( inarray, people ):

    import random

    random.shuffle(inarray)
    valid = 1    

    for i in range(0, len(inarray)):

        if inarray[i] == people[i]:

            valid = 0
    if valid == 1:

        return inarray

    else:

        return shuffle_people(inarray, people)
# MAIN        

import copy

print "Running Secret Santa"

people = giftees.keys()
pre_shuffled_people = copy.copy(people)

shuffled_people = shuffle_people(pre_shuffled_people, people)
for i in range(0, len(people)):

    name = people[i]

    target_name = shuffled_people[i]

    email = giftees[name]['email']

    target_request = giftees[target_name]['gift']
    send_mail( email, name, target_name, target_request, SMTP_DETAILS)
print "Secret Santa Complete"

secret_santa.py

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