dodjango/paperless_attach

Attach documents from a Paperless-ngx instance directly into the Roundcube compose flow (Elastic skin).

v1.0.0 2026-06-02 10:47 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.4
• roundcube/plugin-installer: >=0.3.1

GPL-3.0-or-later

• dodjango

• plugin
• attachment
• roundcube
• self-hosted
• paperless
• paperless-ngx

README

A Roundcube (Elastic skin) plugin to attach documents from a Paperless-ngx instance straight from the compose window — search, filter, pick, attached. No download/re-upload detour. The per-user API token is stored encrypted and all Paperless traffic stays server-side.

Features

• 🔍 Search + filter your documents — full-text, tags, correspondent, document type, date range — and multi-select across pages.
• 🖇️ Attaches the searchable archive PDF, fetched server-side.
• 🔐 Token stored encrypted; token + Paperless URL never reach the browser (single server-side proxy).
• 🧰 Oversize rejected before download, born-digital docs skipped, per-item batch results, no duplicate attaches.
• 🐳 Survives :latest (bind-mount + ROUNDCUBEMAIL_PLUGINS, no image build).

Compose button	Settings — token + connection test

_{Document titles, correspondents and the sender address are blurred in the screenshots.}

Requirements

Roundcube 1.6.x · Elastic skin only · PHP 7.4+ · a reachable Paperless-ngx instance.

Install

Composer (from your Roundcube root):

composer require dodjango/paperless_attach

Docker bind-mount (recommended for roundcube/roundcubemail:latest — survives image updates):

services:
  roundcubemail:
    volumes:
      - ./plugins/paperless_attach:/var/www/html/plugins/paperless_attach:ro
    environment:
      - ROUNDCUBEMAIL_PLUGINS=archive,zipdownload,...,paperless_attach   # append, keep the rest
      - ROUNDCUBEMAIL_DES_KEY=<EXACTLY 24 characters>                    # encrypts the token

Set PHP upload_max_filesize / post_max_size / memory_limit ≥ your Roundcube upload limit, otherwise the effective attachment cap drops to the lower value.

⚠️ Never change des_key after tokens are stored — it makes all stored tokens (and sessions) undecryptable; every user would have to re-enter their token. Pin it once.

Configure

• Token (per user): Settings → Paperless → paste your Paperless API token → Save → Test connection.
• Paperless URL (server-side): copy config.inc.php.dist → config.inc.php and set $config['paperless_url']. It is server-fixed (SSRF guard — no per-user URL field); the default http://paperless-webserver:8000 is an internal Docker hostname, so most installs must change it.

Security

Token encrypted via rcube::encrypt() — never stored in DB plaintext, echoed to the field, or placed in rcmail.env/AJAX. All Paperless calls originate from one server-side proxy (lib/PaperlessClient.php) with redirects disabled, enforced timeouts, and integer-validated document ids. Designed for internal-network use.

Status

v1.0 — in daily use on the author's self-hosted stack. Best-effort community plugin (no warranty), so far verified on a single deployment; testing on other Roundcube 1.6.x setups, issues and PRs are very welcome.

Contributing & releases

Conventional Commits + Semantic Versioning, released automatically via release-please. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Out of scope (v2)

Archive-vs-original choice per document · inline PDF preview · saved searches · skins other than Elastic.

Author & license

Created and maintained by @dodjango. Built with the help of AI tooling (Claude); all code is human-reviewed and live-tested.

Licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE.