sendwithus Ruby Action Mailer

sendwithus is a service that provides a convenient way for non-developers to create and edit the email content from your app. sendwithus has created a gem, send_with_us, that communicates with our REST API for sending templated emails.

Ruby on Rails developers are familiar with the ActionMailer interface for sending email. This gem implements a small layer over the send_with_us gem that provides and ActionMailer-like API.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'sendwithus_ruby_action_mailer'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install sendwithus_ruby_action_mailer

For a Rails app, create send_with_us.rb in /config/initializers/ with the following:

SendWithUs::Api.configure do |config|
    config.api_key = 'YOUR API KEY'
    config.debug = true
end

Mailer models inherit from SendWithUsMailer::Base. A mailer model defines methods used to generate an email message. In these methods, you can assign variables to be sent to the Send With Us service and options on the mail itself such as the :from address.

class Notifier < SendWithUsMailer::Base
    default from: 'no-reply@example.com'

    def welcome(recipient)
        assign(:account, recipient)
        #=> in sendwithus email template {{ account }}
        assign(:captain_name, recipient.name)
        #=> in sendwithus email template {{ captain_name }}
        assign :team, {team_name: recipient.team_name, captain: recipient.name}
        #=> in sendwithus email template {{ team.team_name }} and {{ team.captain }}

        mail(
            email_id: 'ID-CODE-FROM-SEND-WITH-US',
            recipient_address: recipient.email,
            from_name: 'Billing',
            from_address: 'billing@example.com',
            reply_to: 'support@example.com',
            bcc: [{:address => "name@example.com"}, {:address => "name2@example.com"}],
            version_name: 'version-A',
            locale: 'en-US',
            files: ["/path/to/file"],
            headers: { 'header-name' => 'header-value' },
            tags: ['some-tag'],
            esp_account: 'esp_45678asjdlfj'
        )
    end
end

Within the mailer method, you have access to the following methods:

• assign - Allows you to assign key-value pairs that will be data payload used by Send With Us within the email.
• mail - Allows you to specify the email to be sent.

Once a mailer action is defined, you can deliver your message or create it and save it for delivery later:

Notifier.welcome(nick).deliver # sends the email

mail = Notifier.welcome(david)  # => a SendWithUsMailer::MailParams object
mail.deliver                    # sends the email

You never instantiate your mailer class. Rather, you just call the method you defined on the class itself.

Notifier.welcome(nick).deliver_later # sends the email asynchronously

mail = Notifier.welcome(david)  # => a SendWithUsMailer::MailParams object
mail.deliver_later              # sends the email asynchronously

mail = Notifier.welcome(david)  # => a SendWithUsMailer::MailParams object
mail.deliver_later(             # send the email asynchronously in
  wait: 5.minutes,              # 5 minutes via the mailers queue
  queue: :priority
)

You never instantiate your mailer class. Rather, you just call the method you defined on the class itself.

If you have to check for a condition for sending the email (useful when it's a scheduled sending with Sidekiq for instance), you can simply not call the mail method and the email won't be sent out.

class Notifier < SendWithUsMailer::Base
    def we_miss_you(user_id)
        user = User.find user_id
        if user.do_we_miss_him?
            mail(
                email_id: 'ID-CODE-FROM-SEND-WITH-US',
                recipient_address: user.email
            )
        end
    end
end

SendWithUsMailer allows you to specify default values inside the class definition:

class Notifier < SendWithUsMailer::Base
    default from_address: 'system@example.com'
end

Because SendWithUsMailer is not a subclass of ActionMailer (SendWithUsMailer.is_a? ActionMailer returns false), Sidekiq's delayed ActionMailer extension will not automatically be included in the SendWithUsMailer, meaning that YourMailer.delay.your_email will not work without additional configuration. You can include Sidekiq's delayed ActionMailer in the SendWithUsMailer by putting the following line in config/initializers/send_with_us.rb along with your API config:

::SendWithUsMailer::Base.extend(Sidekiq::Extensions::ActionMailer)

That will cause Sidekiq to actually deliver the emails for jobs it processes offline. Relevant code in Sidekiq::Extensions::ActionMailer and SendWithUsMailer::Base should help explain why this is necessary.

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request