Clerks Friend

---

Useful reports for Ward Clerk's of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The included script clerks_friend can run several useful reports and produce Markdown style output. This output could be used by various programs to create HTML or PDF output. Or, the way I use it, is to paste the markdown into Google Docs. They have a feature where markdown can be pasted into a Google Doc and it will render the output.

Command Line Script

This package installs a command line script called clerks_friend:

$ clerks_friend --help
usage: clerks_friend [-h] [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD] [-c COOKIE_FILE]
                     [-o MARKDOWN_OUTPUT]
                     INPUT_FILE

Run clerk reports from LCR for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints.

positional arguments:
  INPUT_FILE            input YAML file containing the report
                        configuration

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        LCR username [env var: LCR_USERNAME]
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        LCR password [env var: LCR_PASSWORD]
  -c COOKIE_FILE, --cookie-file COOKIE_FILE
                        cookie jar file to save the session or load a
                        saved session
  -o MARKDOWN_OUTPUT, --output MARKDOWN_OUTPUT
                        output file for markdown report. Defaults to
                        stdout.

Authentication

The clerks_friend script requires your member username and password, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints LCR system. There are three different ways to supply these credentials:

1. On the command line, using the --username and --password options.
2. Through the environment variables LCR_USERNAME and LCR_PASSWORD.
3. From an environment file .env. This is the recommended option.

The .env file must be in the same directory that the script is run from. The file format is very simple:

LCR_USERNAME=ace
LCR_PASSWORD=ThePassword

Report File Input

The input file, specifying which reports to run and their parameters, is a YAML file format. As example is shown below:

---
title: Celestial Ward Clerical Report

reports:
  - name: not_set_apart
    heading: Not Set Apart

  - name: expiring_recommends
    heading: "Expiring/Expired Temple Recommends"
    parameters:
      months_past: -3
      months_future: 1
      recommend_type: REGULAR

  - name: protecting_children_and_youth_training
    heading: Protecting Children and Youth Training
    parameters:
      months_future: 1

  - name: sacrament_meeting_attendance
    heading: Sacrament Meeting Attendance
    parameters:
      year: 2024

Valid Reports

The currently valid report types are:

• expiring_recommends
• members_moved_in
• members_moved_out
• not_set_apart
• protecting_children_and_youth_training
• sacrament_meeting_attendance

As time permits I would like to add additional reports. If you would like to help add more reports then please feel free to open a pull request, or an issue describing the report you'd like.

Cached Sessions

This script uses the lcr_session library to provide authentication. This library can also cache sessions, so that re-authentication is not necessary if several reports need to be run in a row. For this use the --cookie-file option. Church sessions are typically valid for one hour.

Example

For example, save the above YAML sample as report.yaml. Create a .env file with your LCR credentials, then run the following:

$ clerks_friend ./report.yaml -c cookies.txt -o report.md

A report.md file would be output with the results. This could then be copied and pasted into a Google Document, which would render the markdown properly. Note that markdown support must be enabled for the document, and you must select the "Paste from markdown" option.