Dynamic Target Folders in Attachment Actions

[MichiFr]

Hi!

This is a feature request and not a bug report.

I'm using some filters to detach or save attachments to a file folder. Some of those target folders are base on the current year. E.g. c:\users\michael\documents\2026.

You can image that each new year, I've to modify those filters and change their folder names to the new year.

Would it be possible to use target folders with variables like:

• c:\users\michael\documents{YYYY} -> c:\users\michael\documents\2026
• c:\users\michael\documents{YYYY-MM} -> c:\users\michael\documents\2026-Februar
• c:\users\michael\documents{YYYY-mm} -> c:\users\michael\documents\2026-02
• c:\users\michael\documents{YYYY-mm-dd} -> c:\users\michael\documents\2026-02-19
• c:\users\michael\documents{dd-mm-yy} -> c:\users\michael\documents\19.02.26
• c:\users\michael\documents{YYYY-MM-dd} -> c:\users\michael\documents\2026-Februar-19

Month names according to the locale the users currently uses.

Thanks,
Michael

[RealRaven2000]

This is similar to #354 - it implies that we can generate folders dynamically , except this one needs to be able to create a (missing) folder (and possibly also parent folders) on the hard drive rather than in the mail store. At least this would potentially be a lot faster, but is still a tricky endavour. I guess it wouldn't be worth much if it would only work if the folder already existed?

[MichiFr]

Hi Axel!
Yes, the enhancement would be much more smarter if the appropriate target folders are auto created. This way, the filter is completely autark and does not need any further user actions once it is set up - just fire and forget ;-)

I understand that there are certain permission prerequisites , e.g. a user does not have access to the root path, however, this may be neglectable when using TB or FiltaQuilla in a private environment.

If possible, raise an error, e.g. the folder or the complet path cannot be created. Don't know if TB provides such functions at all.

[RealRaven2000]

If possible, raise an error, e.g. the folder or the complete path cannot be created. Don't know if TB provides such functions at all.

no, there is no point - there is currently no API that allows an Add-on any file access without user interaction. Web extensions are not supposed to "know" anything about the local drive. When user saves or loads a file using a file picker, only the data is transferred without any information on where it is stored locally.

As FiltaQuilla is an "experimental Add-on" it inherits all permissions from Thunderbird itself so generally creating a local folder is not a big deal for me. The hard thing is putting additional parameters into a folder picker - that is a lot of work! The filter service doesn;t allow any additional parameters in a filter action so it needs to be part of the value field.

I did something like this in the regular expression matching by adding a settings button which appends a json structure with parameters:

We should just come up with some placeholders, such as:

user path/%date(Y)%-%date(M)%-%date(D)%/

This is also similar to issue #219.

By the way here is the list of all open feature requests with attachments, this stuff is extremely tricky and fragile, hence there are many:

https://github.com/RealRaven2000/FiltaQuilla/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3Aattachments

[MichiFr]

I did not expect to get the appropriate date-templates or -variables to be selectable using a picker or sthg. similar like in screenshot above. Adding or inserting them into the path, maybe after selecting the target folder, is OK for me.