Add ntfy as a notification backend #1076

yiyunliu · 2025-12-04T05:39:49Z

Checklist

All new and existing tests are passing
(If adding features:) I have added tests to cover my changes
(If docs changes needed:) I have updated the documentation accordingly.
I have added an entry to CHANGES.rst because this is a user-facing change or an important bugfix
I have written proper commit message(s)

What changes does this Pull Request introduce?

I wrote a ntfy.sh backend based on what's in the Stdout subscriber object. Everything has been tested to work on with my ntfy setup, except for the new_thread callback, which i'm not sure exactly how to trigger.

ntfy.sh is quite easy to set up and satisfies my need to run the notification service locally on my VPN. SMTP, on the other hand, is kind of tricky to setup compared to the straightforward API that ntfy provides.

If the patch is considered useful, I'd be happy to start working on the checklist items. (Might need some help on the testing side)

Why is this necessary?

N/A because it's a feature?

The SMTP notification backend looks quite complicated and is tricky to setup so I wrote a ntfy backend based on what's in the Stdout subscriber object. Everything has been tested to work on with my ntfy setup, except for the new_thread callback, which i'm not sure exactly how to trigger. It is also currently missing documentations. I will add the relevant sections to the documentation if the patch is considered useful.

isso/config.py

jelmer · 2025-12-04T11:10:20Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+        self.notify("comment %(id)s activated" % thread)
+
+    def notify(self, str):
+        response = requests.post(urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic")), data = str.encode(encoding='utf-8'))


Do we really need requests for this, isn't just urllib sufficient?

I'll go through the urllib tutorial and remove the requests dependency. The ntfy backend only needs to make post requests so it shouldn't be difficult to make the switch.

Removed the dependency on requests and the backend now calls urlopen directly for connections to the nfty server. I wonder if the proper way to do this is to extend utils/http.py to also take an optional data argument, although urlopen from urllib seems more than enough for this type of one-off notification messages.

jelmer · 2025-12-04T11:13:13Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

                break


+class Ntfy(object):


If we're going to have multiple notifiers, we should probably have a common base class.

That makes sense. I also want to add there's a lot of overlap between the Stdout and the Ntfy objects. The latter uses the exact same plaintext message that the former emits and the only difference is that the message in Ntfy goes to an http request instead of stdout. Could add another common class for Stdout and Nfty to avoid writing the same logic twice.

jelmer · 2025-12-04T11:13:54Z

Curious about @ix5 's thoughts as well.

My main concern here is feature creep - if ntfy.sh is sufficiently popular then I think it makes sense to support. But we don't really want to support a dozen different notification mechanisms because it's hard to keep them from regressing and would give users a bad experience.

There is already the utility library http.curl around but sadly it doesn't seem to support passing data for POST requests

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:59:58Z

@jelmer thank you for notifying.

We already have a PR open for a very similar thing: Feature: add webhook notification capability #724 (which sadly has languished for a while).
Since a ntfy server acts as a receiver for GET/POST requests, that PR could be extended to provide a template for ntfy as a further webhook integration. It would also have the benefit of not cluttering the config options even further.

While I like the simplicity of this PR, I think ultimately #724 is the way to go. @jelmer should we have another go at encouraging the submitter to update the PR and get it ready for merging? @yiyunliu maybe you would also be up to the task since @ Guts seems to have stepped back a bit.

(Also #457 was aimed at a different functionality, just to keep on the radar about notification backends)

ix5

In case we decide to go along with this PR, this would be my suggested changes. @yiyunliu no need to act upon this yet before a decision has been made, just letting you know.

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:30:43Z

isso/__init__.py

        if smtp_backend or conf.getboolean("general", "reply-notifications"):
            subscribers.append(SMTP(self))

+        if ntfy_backend:


No need to introduce a ntfy_backend variable, you can just move this block below elif backend == "ntfy"

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:31:03Z

isso/config.py


 from email.utils import parseaddr, formataddr
 from configparser import ConfigParser, NoOptionError, NoSectionError, DuplicateSectionError
+from urllib.parse import urlparse


unused import, leftover?

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:47:05Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+
+    def notify(self, str):
+        topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic"))
+        try:


Some simple retry/backoff logic here, perhaps a bit more sophisticated than time.sleep(60) as we do with SMTP?

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:48:40Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+        try:
+            with urlopen(topic_url,str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:
+                pass
+        except URLError as e:


Not that I think it matters much, but other types of errors (apart from URLError) are not caught and reported here.

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:49:33Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+    def notify(self, str):
+        topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic"))
+        try:
+            with urlopen(topic_url,str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:


Please leave a space between topic_url and str.encode)

Suggested change

with urlopen(topic_url,str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:

with urlopen(topic_url, str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:49:55Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+        self.notify("comment %(id)s activated" % thread)
+
+    def notify(self, str):
+        topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic"))


Suggested change

topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic"))

topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"), self.conf.get("topic"))

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:51:55Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+        self.notify("\n".join(response_strs))
+
+    def _edit_comment(self, comment):
+        self.notify(f"comment {comment["id"]} edited: {json.dumps(comment)}")


Should we send raw JSON to ntfy channels? I suppose the audience for ntfy is rather technically inclined but could we format this a bit more nicely?

ix5 · 2025-12-05T01:53:09Z

isso/ext/notifications.py

+                pass
+        except URLError as e:
+            if hasattr(e, 'reason'):
+                logger.exception(f"Failed to reach the ntfy server.\nError code: {e.code}" )


No newlines for log output here (and below) would be my preference.

yiyunliu · 2025-12-05T02:38:29Z

@yiyunliu maybe you would also be up to the task since @ Guts seems to have stepped back a bit.

I'd be happy to take a look at the draft and try rebasing the PR to and resolving some of the remaining issues. I'm not really familiar with the spec of webhook, however, so I might have trouble coming up with good test cases other than checking if it works with ntfy's webhook support.

jelmer reviewed Dec 4, 2025

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isso/config.py Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

jelmer reviewed Dec 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

Remove dependency on requests and use urllib for ntfy requests

1902bcd

There is already the utility library http.curl around but sadly it doesn't seem to support passing data for POST requests

ix5 requested changes Dec 5, 2025

View reviewed changes

	with urlopen(topic_url,str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:
	with urlopen(topic_url, str.encode(encoding='utf-8')) as response:

	topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"),self.conf.get("topic"))
	topic_url = urljoin(self.conf.get("url"), self.conf.get("topic"))

Add ntfy as a notification backend #1076

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Add ntfy as a notification backend #1076

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yiyunliu commented Dec 4, 2025

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jelmer commented Dec 4, 2025

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ix5 commented Dec 5, 2025

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yiyunliu commented Dec 5, 2025

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