Custom message content

This page describes the template system used to format text messages sent

The template system used in Duplicati is quite simple, as it will essentially expand Windows-style environment placeholders, %EXAMPLE%, into values. The same replace logic works for both the subject line (if applicable) and the message body.

Note: The description here only covers the text-based output (such as emails, etc). The template system for JSON is a bit different.

Duplicati has defaults for the body and subject line, but you can specify a custom string here. For convenience, the string can also be a path to a file on the machine, which contains the template.

An example custom template could look like:

Duplicati %OPERATIONNAME% for %backup-name% on %machine-name%

The %OPERATIONNAME% operation has completed with the result: %PARSEDRESULT%

Source folders: 
%LOCALPATH%

Encryption module: %ENCRYPTION-MODULE%
Compression module: %COMPRESSION-MODULE%

%RESULT%

The template engine supports reporting any setting by using the setting name as the template value. Besides the options, there are also a few variables that can be used to extract information more easily:

%PARSEDRESULT%
  The parsed result op the operation: Success, Warning, Error
%RESULT%
  When used in the body, this is the result/log of the backup, 
  When used in the subject line, this is the same as %PARSEDRESULT%
%OPERATIONNAME%
  The name of the operation, usually "backup", but could also be "restore" etc.
%REMOTEURL%
  The backend url
%LOCALPATH%
  The path to the local folders involved (i.e. the folders being backed up)
%machine-id%
  The assigned unique random identifier for the current machine. 
  Can be overridden with --machine-id
%backup-id%
  The assigned id for the backup. Can be overridden with --backup-id
%backup-name%
  The name of the backup. Can be overridden with --backup-name
%machine-name%
  The name of the machine. Can be overridden with --machine-name

JSON output

If the output is JSON it needs to be handled different than regular text, to ensure the result is valid. The logic for this is to re-use the templating concept, but only as a lookup, to figure out what keys to include in the results.

An example template could be:

%OPERATIONNAME% 
%backup-name% 
%machine-name% 
%PARSEDRESULT% 
%LOCALPATH%
%ENCRYPTION-MODULE%
%COMPRESSION-MODULE%

This will ensure that each of those values will be included in the extra element in the JSON output. The default template for JSON output includes all fields listed above, but no options are included by default.