rick/faxing

Simple tool to fax a file to a number (using Phaxio.com) from the command-line

send a fax, via phaxio.com

Send a file (e.g., a PDF file) to a recipient's fax number via the Phaxio.com API.

Get set up:

• Go to https://www.phaxio.com/ and create an account
• Put some money in there; I think it's costing $0.07 per page(?) these days
• Grab your API keys from https://console.phaxio.com/api_credentials

Install:

$ bundle install

Set up your environment:

$ export PHAXIO_API_KEY=your-key-here
$ export PHAXIO_API_SECRET=your-secret-here

Run the faxing script:

# usage: bundle exec ruby script/fax.rb <phone-number> <file>
$ bundle exec ruby script/fax.rb 18885551212 ~/Desktop/impeach-trump-senator-dipshit.pdf

Check the progress on your dashboard at: https://console.phaxio.com/

send a latex-templated fax to a recipient defined in JSON

Lol.

But, seriously:

• brew install basictex; you probably have to log out / in, or run bash --login to make this work after installation.
  • yes, I'm presuming you're on a mac for this. 🤷
• Copy data/me.json-sample over to data/me.json and put your (sender's) data in.
• Make data/whomever.json files for your recipients, and fill their data out. Add a "fax:" hash entry for a fax number (see data/they.json for a sample).
• drop a signature.png image in images/data/ for your pretty hand-drawn signature.
• Tweak the templates/letter.tex template if you want to.
• Make a text file somewhere (like tmp/letter-body.txt) with the text of your letter body in it.
• Make sure your phaxio account and credentials are set up, like above.
• Run the script for a sender / recipient.

$ ruby script/merge.rb 
Usage: script/merge.rb [options]
 (provide message body on STDIN)
    -v, --[no-]verbose               Run verbosely
        --from=SENDER                name of data/<sender>.json file to fetch sender data from (default: me)
        --to=RECIPIENT               name of data/<recipient>.json file to fetch recipient data from
        --template=TEMPLATE          name of templates/<template>.tex file to merge (default: letter)
$ cat tmp/letter.txt | ruby script/merge.rb --to=them


This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.20 (TeX Live 2019) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
When ready, run:
bundle exec ruby script/fax.rb 8885551212 /Users/rick/git/faxing/tmp/output20200129-70151-11fy0ya.pdf

# probably a PDF viewer window with your PDF in it will show up; or an error message

If you're happy, run that command to send your fax.