This is the WikiNewsletter for news about building and maintaining FlexWiki (the software and the content).

_NewsletterHistory, PlayPage, SandBox

Looks like someone might have set up the RSS feeds to also exclude the same topics - but I'm not sure about that. If someone knows for sure, please post. -- CraigAndera [2004-07-26]

False. Sorta. You can also get newsletters via RSS feeds. See WikiNewsletters.

How the sheck is this implemented? A windows service? I assume not. Can ASP.NET somehow trigger hourly processes if someone is not accessing a page? Of course I could delve into the code to figure out, and will, but I was hoping I could get someone who knows to just answer. -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-14]

No service: There's a worker thread that the FlexWiki code starts from an ASP.NET request thread as part of normal page processing. So if you never touch the wiki, the thread will never start, and the newsletters will never arrive. Be aware that the newsletters are horribly buggy right now - I have several FlexWiki installations where they work intermittantly if at all. This is on my list of things to fix at some point. -- CraigAndera [2004-07-26]

See NewslettersAreFixed.

Do newsletters with Topics: * actually work? I'd like to implement an hourly updates newsletter on my own site, just like this one, but as soon as the worker process decides it's time to Email out an update, it continues to send the same Email out to the subscribers every 10 seconds. I came in this morning to find 4027 Emails kindly generated by it overnight! What am I doing wrong? Has anyone ever had this working properly? I've tried putting Exclude: _NewsletterHistory after the Topics: *, just to make sure it's not picking up on its own file changes, but all sadly to no avail. -- ChrisLacey [2004-10-24]

See NewslettersAreFixed.

I too am having the same problem as ChrisLacey. If you look at the newsletters.aspx file it shows that its sending out all updates since 1/1/2004. This dat should be updated?? - BrianCorrigan [2004-10-29]

See NewslettersAreFixed.

I figured this out. Its actually logging to the CSV file described in Web.config. Mine was commented out, hence it never recorded the fact that the newsletter was sent and continually sent all changes. make sure this file is being generated and everything should be working. - BrianCorrigan [2004-10-29]

See NewslettersAreFixed.

Ok, this still did not fix the problem. I am still getting continuous emails. Ad-infinitum. Strange?? - BrianCorrigan [2004-10-29]

See NewslettersAreFixed.

The trouble seems to be that NewsletterManager.GetLastUpdateForNewsletter() retrieves the LastUpdate property for a given newsletter through a sequence of methods that, eventually, end up at Federation.GetCachedTopic(). As the name of this final method suggests, the value of the LastUpdate property is being retrieved from a cache. Good idea. Unfortunately, following the production of the newsletter, the update to the LastUpdate property does not go back through the cache. It seems to write directly to the NewsletterHistory.wiki file. Perhaps I've not yet stumbled upon the place in the code where the cache is invalidated if the cached file changes. If such a mechanism exists, it doesn't seem to work on my machine, nor, apparently on Chris' and Brian's. When all is said and done, it looks to me as though there needs to be a Federation.SetCachedTopic() to go with Federation.GetCachedTopic(). -- StuartMacleod [2004-12-03]

See NewslettersAreFixed.