hedgedoc-expire - remove old notes

A Python app that can be run regularly against a Postgres Hedgedoc database to remove old notes. Notes that are expired can be emailed to the author as a backup.

Expiring old notes and revisions

Hedgedoc keeps notes and revisions (versions) of those notes forever. This might not be desirable, for example because of data protection reasons. With this utility, you can remove old revisions and old notes from the database.

Expiring old revisions

All revisions that have been created before the specified age will be removed. If all revisions are expired, the note remains available, it just won't have any revisions to revert to. Once you continue editing it, new revisions will be added.

Expiring old notes

Notes that are being expired will be emailed to the account that initially created the note. This allows that user to restore the note, if necessary. Expiring a note will also remove all existing revisions for the note.

You will need to configure your environment for the hedgedoc-expire to be able to send mail. If the mail is not accepted by the mail server, the note will not be removed.

Running hedgedoc-expire.py

Locally from the command line:

poetry run python ./hedgedoc-expire.py ...

From Docker Compose:

  hedgedoc-expire:
    image: hedgedoc-expire
    command: "-c -r 14 -n 95"
    environment:
      - "POSTGRES_HOSTNAME=database"
    depends_on:
      - database

Arguments and Environment Variables

There are two main modes to run hedgedoc-require: check and expire. With -c, a report is generated on standard out. Without it, the expiry action will be taken.

Option	Default	Description
-c		Create a report which revisions and notes will be expired
-n	90	remove all notes not changed in these many days
-r	7	remove all revisions created more than these many days ago

Environment variables

To configure the Postgres database connection and the SMTP parameters to send mail, set these variables.

For the SMTP connection, the code assumes a standard submission protocol setup with enable StartTLS and authentication, so you will need to configure a username and password.

Variable	Default	Description
POSTGRES_DATABASE	hedgedoc	database to connect to
POSTGRES_HOSTNAME	localhost	host of the database server
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	geheim	password for the database
POSTGRES_PORT	5432	port number of the database server
POSTGRES_USERNAME	hedgedoc	username for the database
SMTP_FROM		sender address for the expiry mails
SMTP_HOSTNAME	localhost	mail server hostname
SMTP_PASSWORD		SMTP password
SMTP_PORT	587	port to connect to
SMTP_USERNAME		SMTP username
URL	http://localhost:3000	base URL for linking to notes

Local Development Setup

Use Docker Compose to bring up a local development environment.

• Hedgedoc: http://localhost:3000
• Adminer: http://localhost:8080/?pgsql=database&username=hedgedoc&db=hedgedoc&ns=public&password=geheim

You will need to create a user using the command line:

docker compose exec -it hedgedoc bin/manage_users --add foo@example.com --pass geheim