secret-santa can help you manage a list of secret santa participants by randomly assigning pairings and sending emails. It can avoid pairing couples to their significant other, and allows custom email messages to be specified.

Usage

Copy config.yml.template to config.yml and enter in the connection details for your outgoing mail server. Modify the participants and couples lists and the email message if you wish.

cd secret-santa/
cp config.yml.template config.yml

Here is the example configuration unchanged:

# Required to connect to your outgoing mail server. Example for using gmail:
# gmail
SMTP_SERVER: smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT: 587
USERNAME: you@gmail.com
PASSWORD: "you're-password"

TIMEZONE: 'US/Pacific'

PARTICIPANTS:
  - Chad <chad@somewhere.net>
  - Jen <jen@gmail.net>
  - Bill <Bill@somedomain.net>
  - Sharon <Sharon@hi.org>


# Couples will never be paired with each other
COUPLES:
  - Chad, Jen
  - Bill, Sharon

# From address should be the organizer in case participants have any questions
FROM: You <you@gmail.net>

# Both SUBJECT and MESSAGE can include variable substitution for the 
# "santa" and "santee"
SUBJECT: Your secret santa recipient is {santee}
MESSAGE: 
  Dear {santa},

  This year you are {santee}'s Secret Santa!. Ho Ho Ho!

  The maximum spending limit is 50.00


  This message was automagically generated from a computer. 

  Nothing could possibly go wrong...

  https://github.com/underbluewaters/secret-santa

Once configured, call secret-santa:

python secret_santa.py

Calling secret-santa without arguments will output a test pairing of participants.

    Test pairings:

    Chad ---> Bill
    Jen ---> Sharon
    Bill ---> Chad
    Sharon ---> Jen

    To send out emails with new pairings,
    call with the --send argument:

        $ python secret_santa.py --send

To send the emails, call using the --send argument

python secret_santa.py --send