Issues with markdown formatting

[rcdailey]

I'd like help addressing two issues:

1. Using a format of markdown, I am not seeing discord notifications with embeds.
2. Using a format of markdown, I am not seeing proper HTML formatting in emails.

First, here's the configuration I'm using in the web UI (with the important bits snipped out):

urls:
- https://discord.com/api/webhooks/snip/snip
- mailto://[email protected][email protected]&[email protected]

I then go to the Notifications tab and send a notification using these settings:

Here is how the notification looks in Discord (this applies to point number 1):

And this is how it looks in email (this applies to point number 2):

My expectation is that Apprise will format markdown to whatever renders best on the platform to which notifications are sent. In Email, that would mean I expect proper HTML output. For Discord, this means I expect an embed. I guess the first thing to address is if my expectation is accurate. I wasn't able to find any general documentation that describes the role Apprise plays in this area.

Using persistent storage mode for configuration, it's really up to the user to specify where notifications will go. I prefer this approach because I do not want to have to support individual notification platforms in my .NET application, which is where I'm ultimately integrating this. That's the whole purpose & value of Apprise, in my opinion: It handles the details of sending notifications to various places so my app only needs to send to 1 endpoint.

I prefer to send notifications using Markdown syntax because this, in my opinion, offers the best mechanism to render notifications using different formats. Markdown looks good and readable in plain text and has a way to render into HTML. It's a good middle-ground that allows me to send notification text in a singular way from my application, thus reducing complexity.

Assuming I'm correct on the expectation side of things -- I'd like to understand why the formatting isn't coming through as I expect on Discord and Email. Your guidance is appreciated!

[caronc]

I saw your comment in Discord and here. Sorry i took so long to get back to you. I'll try my best to explain Apprise with regards to the different formats (text, html, and markdown).

Also consider a few rules that Apprise goes off of:

1. Apprise will not alter the data you provide it unless you tell it to
2. Apprise will only alter the data (if given permission to) if it differs from what the upstream server expects. Hence you provide HTML as input, and it's a text message being delivered. The HTML will get changed to text.

Because of the first rule above, what you pass in, is mostly/usually exactly what gets passed along as output.

HOWEVER, if you do one of the following:

• During your POST you provide format=<text/html/markdown> (or JSON: format: "<text/html/markdown>")
• Using the Python Library, you call notify(..., body_format=<text/html/markdown>)
• Using the CLI (Apprise binary) you add --type or -t <text/html/markdown>

Hence you provide text, html, OR markdown to the Apprise system, you've now let it know that the data you're feeding it. Without being explicit like this, it doesn't know, and it doesn't care, and it just assumes you know what you're doing.

If Apprise knows what it is fed, it will apply logic #2 above; you've not given it permission to transform the data by giving it insight that it may have to.

Now Discord is a bit of a different beast, because it can take data is text, or markdown. By default it uses text unless it must use markdown. This is by design (in fact most plugins are set this way). Text is more flexible because administrators can send anything without worrying their content will get misinterpreted upstream.

Okay, so how do you force the output to be markdown? Simple just add ?format=markdown on your URL string

discord://credentials/?format=makrdown

Other triggers are to make use some of the features Apprise/Discord offers that only works if you're in markdown mode such as url=.

In your example above, i think there is an issue with the email though for sure. It should have converted new lines to <br/> under the hood knowing up front you were passing in markdown. So i'll create a ticket for this
Edit: Created #1084

[caronc]

I agree, i spotted that after my response and moved your info to #1084.

The problem is i travel a lot for work, so weekends are all I get to solve problems (and I've queued quite a few). You definitely proved there is a bug i need to investigate 🙂

[rcdailey]

I'm sorry if I seem demanding. I really very much appreciate your help. Looks like in both cases we might have a bug then? I was fully expecting that I did something wrong 😂

I will monitor that issue and wait for a fix. Thank you again!

[rcdailey]

I forgot to say also that Roxedus was able to get discord embeds working. I'm not sure what he did differently. But I wasn't able to get it to work. This makes me think that I'm doing something wrong, versus there being a bug with regards to going from Markdown -> Discord Embed.

[caronc]

You don't seem demanding at all, i wish i was a better maintainer. I love this project. I just only get a few hours a week i can dedicate to it. I appreciate people like you who report things like this! 🙏🚀

I'll re-review what was said in Discord, but your screenshots and examples do still seem to paint a possible issue on my end. I'll investigate anyway; no harm, no foul

[caronc]

I believe I've resolved the issue (at least I better understand it anyway and added a significant improvement) with #1089

[rcdailey]

Thank you! I will test it this week. I assume another PR is forthcoming for the discord embed?

[caronc]

Discord embed comes naturally with the payload provided. If you want full control over the discord JSON object, then that's a bit outside the scope of Apprise.

The markdown should work provided you format it correctly

[rcdailey]

Are you saying that the reason the discord embed did not appear for me was due to the HTML fixes you made? I just want to be clear on the issue. This isn't about having specific control over the embed itself. It's the fact that an embed was not used at all for my test scenario.