Automate Processing Of Pocket Queries

[+SnoWake]

Fellow Cachers:

 

I did some searching for any existing threads on this topic, and couldn't come up with a good example that answered my question or was right on the mark.

 

Here's what I'm interested in -- a solution to automate the processing of delivered pocket queries (GPX files) into several other usable forms: E.G. "Spun" into a form for importing into my Palm, as well as compiled and translated into a file for Streets and Trips (.est file), and finally ready for import to my GPSr.

 

I have seen some brief discussion of automating much of this, leveraging existing excellent tools like GSAK, GPSbabel, GPX Spinner, cmconvert, etc . I'm using all these tools now in a manual fashion - and unfortunately, they aren't an ideal fit for my desired automation platform, which is my Linux server where the pocket queries land.

 

So - I'm already sorting the PQs off into a dedicated folder via Procmail - and realize that I could, alternatively, pass the messages to some sort of command line. I'm struggling with what tool/process might strip the attachment and save it off - and google hasn't been much help in my quest.

 

Once that's done, and I've got a directory full of GPX files - I think there are Linux tools out there that can be scripted to accomplish most, if not all, of what I'm after. In a worst-case scenario, I can full all the PQ files over to a windows machine, or even retrieve the messages to a windows host for processing, if that's my best bet.

 

Anyone out there doing anything like this... and willing to share? If I can bolt together a workable system, I'll definitely document and post the process for others.

 

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions,

Billy

(aka SnoWake)

[+NightPilot]

GPSBabel (which you already have if you installed GSAK) was written for this. It runs from the command line, which means it can be invoked by a batch file. Write a batch file that calls GPSBabel 3 times, once for each transposition you want to do. You may want to read the documentation for GPSBabel, but you can get enough information by running it with the ? switch, or even better, by 'gpsbabel /? > info.txt'. This will pipe the help text from gpsbabel.exe to a file called info.txt, which you can read with any text editor or quickview.exe. If you download gpsbabel by itself, it has a file named babelopts.txt which explains the options. If you don't know how to write a batch file, or run files from a DOS prompt, you need to learn, because that's the way to do automation.

 

Edited to add babelopts.txt

Edited April 1, 2004 by NightPilot

[robertlipe]

If you have to run GPSBabel three times to get the same data output in three different formats, we've failed. You can specify multiple -o/-F pairs.

 

To the original poster, GPSBabel is immensely scriptable from procmail on Linux; search the gpsbabel-misc mailing list archives for extensive examples of such recepies.

[+Maeglin]

As far as CMConvert goes, there's source available for a command-line version of that (if you're not already aware of it) that can be compiled and used in *ix environments, and can definitely be scripted. There's options to cover most everything that you can do in the Windows GUI version of the app.

 

I know of people scripting with it in Linux and Windows, and it's also what's used under the hood by MacCMConvert and GSAK's CacheMate export.

[+Maeglin]

As far as pulling out the attachments, if you're familiar with Perl at all you can use the MIME-tools package to parse the email and pull out the attachment. I don't use it to pull out GPX files, but I have been using it for a while with other types of file attachments.

 

Here's a modified copy of part of one of my scripts that might work...

 

use MIME::Parser;

 

my $parser = new MIME::Parser;

$parser->output_under("/some/temp/directory");

 

$gpx_filename = undef;

 

$entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN);

if ($entity) {

  if ($entity->is_multipart) {

    foreach $part ($entity->parts) {

      if ($part->head->recommended_filename =~ /^.*\.gpx$/) {

        $gpx_filename = $part->bodyhandle->path;

      }

    }

  }

}

 

The mods to the script are untested, but what it should do is parse the email (coming in on standard input) into a subdirectory under the one you specified with output_under (which you can clean up with a cron job later) and, if it contains an attachment with a filename ending in .gpx, it'll set $gpx_filename to the path of the extracted GPX file in that subdirectory. You can then pass that off to whatever you want to convert/parse it with.

[+trippy1976]

I use babel/spinner/isilo from the command line in a batch program to produce the output.

 

GSAK uses babel to drop out files of various types and will load straight to GPS. This is becoming my preferred method. Load a GPX file into GSAK and load in my GPS, drop out for about anything (including streets & trips), and just copy the GPX to my PDA for use in GPX Sonar.

 

It's not "automated" but it's easy.