164 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
164 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
= Action Mailer -- Easy email delivery and testing
|
|
|
|
Action Mailer is a framework for designing email-service layers. These layers
|
|
are used to consolidate code for sending out forgotten passwords, welcome
|
|
wishes on signup, invoices for billing, and any other use case that requires
|
|
a written notification to either a person or another system.
|
|
|
|
Action Mailer is in essence a wrapper around Action Controller and the
|
|
Mail gem. It provides a way to make emails using templates in the same
|
|
way that Action Controller renders views using templates.
|
|
|
|
Additionally, an Action Mailer class can be used to process incoming email,
|
|
such as allowing a blog to accept new posts from an email (which could even
|
|
have been sent from a phone).
|
|
|
|
== Sending emails
|
|
|
|
The framework works by initializing any instance variables you want to be
|
|
available in the email template, followed by a call to +mail+ to deliver
|
|
the email.
|
|
|
|
This can be as simple as:
|
|
|
|
class Notifier < ActionMailer::Base
|
|
delivers_from 'system@loudthinking.com'
|
|
|
|
def welcome(recipient)
|
|
@recipient = recipient
|
|
mail(:to => recipient,
|
|
:subject => "[Signed up] Welcome #{recipient}")
|
|
end
|
|
end
|
|
|
|
The body of the email is created by using an Action View template (regular
|
|
ERB) that has the instance variables that are declared in the mailer action.
|
|
|
|
So the corresponding body template for the method above could look like this:
|
|
|
|
Hello there,
|
|
|
|
Mr. <%= @recipient %>
|
|
|
|
Thank you for signing up!
|
|
|
|
And if the recipient was given as "david@loudthinking.com", the email
|
|
generated would look like this:
|
|
|
|
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:48:09 +1100
|
|
From: system@loudthinking.com
|
|
To: david@loudthinking.com
|
|
Message-ID: <4b5d84f9dd6a5_7380800b81ac29578@void.loudthinking.com.mail>
|
|
Subject: [Signed up] Welcome david@loudthinking.com
|
|
Mime-Version: 1.0
|
|
Content-Type: text/plain;
|
|
charset="US-ASCII";
|
|
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
|
|
|
|
Hello there,
|
|
|
|
Mr. david@loudthinking.com
|
|
|
|
Thank you for signing up!
|
|
|
|
In previous version of Rails you would call <tt>create_method_name</tt> and
|
|
<tt>deliver_method_name</tt>. Rails 3.0 has a much simpler interface, you
|
|
simply call the method and optionally call +deliver+ on the return value.
|
|
|
|
Calling the method returns a Mail Message object:
|
|
|
|
message = Notifier.welcome # => Returns a Mail::Message object
|
|
message.deliver # => delivers the email
|
|
|
|
Or you can just chain the methods together like:
|
|
|
|
Notifier.welcome.deliver # Creates the email and sends it immediately
|
|
|
|
== Setting defaults
|
|
|
|
It is possible to set default values that will be used in every method in your Action Mailer class. To implement this functionality, you just call the public class method <tt>default</tt> which you get for free from ActionMailer::Base. This method accepts a Hash as the parameter. You can use any of the headers e-mail messages has, like <tt>:from</tt> as the key. You can also pass in a string as the key, like "Content-Type", but Action Mailer does this out of the box for you, so you won't need to worry about that. Finally it is also possible to pass in a Proc that will get evaluated when it is needed.
|
|
|
|
Note that every value you set with this method will get over written if you use the same key in your mailer method.
|
|
|
|
Example:
|
|
|
|
class Authenticationmailer < ActionMailer::Base
|
|
default :from => "awesome@application.com", :subject => Proc.new { "E-mail was generated at #{Time.now}" }
|
|
.....
|
|
end
|
|
|
|
== Receiving emails
|
|
|
|
To receive emails, you need to implement a public instance method called <tt>receive</tt> that takes an
|
|
email object as its single parameter. The Action Mailer framework has a corresponding class method,
|
|
which is also called <tt>receive</tt>, that accepts a raw, unprocessed email as a string, which it then turns
|
|
into the email object and calls the receive instance method.
|
|
|
|
Example:
|
|
|
|
class Mailman < ActionMailer::Base
|
|
def receive(email)
|
|
page = Page.find_by_address(email.to.first)
|
|
page.emails.create(
|
|
:subject => email.subject, :body => email.body
|
|
)
|
|
|
|
if email.has_attachments?
|
|
email.attachments.each do |attachment|
|
|
page.attachments.create({
|
|
:file => attachment, :description => email.subject
|
|
})
|
|
end
|
|
end
|
|
end
|
|
end
|
|
|
|
This Mailman can be the target for Postfix or other MTAs. In Rails, you would use the runner in the
|
|
trivial case like this:
|
|
|
|
rails runner 'Mailman.receive(STDIN.read)'
|
|
|
|
However, invoking Rails in the runner for each mail to be received is very resource intensive. A single
|
|
instance of Rails should be run within a daemon, if it is going to be utilized to process more than just
|
|
a limited number of email.
|
|
|
|
== Configuration
|
|
|
|
The Base class has the full list of configuration options. Here's an example:
|
|
|
|
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
|
|
:address => 'smtp.yourserver.com', # default: localhost
|
|
:port => '25', # default: 25
|
|
:user_name => 'user',
|
|
:password => 'pass',
|
|
:authentication => :plain # :plain, :login or :cram_md5
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
|
|
== Download and installation
|
|
|
|
The latest version of Action Mailer can be installed with RubyGems:
|
|
|
|
% [sudo] gem install actionmailer
|
|
|
|
Source code can be downloaded as part of the Rails project on GitHub
|
|
|
|
* https://github.com/rails/rails/tree/3-2-stable/actionmailer
|
|
|
|
|
|
== License
|
|
|
|
Action Mailer is released under the MIT license.
|
|
|
|
|
|
== Support
|
|
|
|
API documentation is at
|
|
|
|
* http://api.rubyonrails.org
|
|
|
|
Bug reports and feature requests can be filed with the rest for the Ruby on Rails project here:
|
|
|
|
* https://github.com/rails/rails/issues
|
|
|