Access helpers from mailer? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have trying to access helper methods from a rails 3 mailer in order to access the current user for the session.
I put the helper :application in my mailer class, which seems to work, except the methods defined therein are not available to my mailer (i get undefined errors). Does anyone know how this is supposed to work?
Here's my class:
class CommentMailer < ActionMailer::Base
default :from => "Andre Fournier <andre#gfournier.com>"
helper :application
end
Thanks,
Sean

Answer 1

To enable you to access application helpers from the ActionMailer views, try adding this:
add_template_helper(ApplicationHelper)
To your ActionMailer (just under your default :from line).

Answer 2

Use helper ApplicationHelper
class NotificationsMailer < ActionMailer::Base
default from: "Community Point <Team#CommunityPoint.ca>"
helper ApplicationHelper
helper NotificationMailerHelper
# ...other code...
NOTE: These helper methods are only available to the Views. They are not available in the mailer class (NotificationMailer in my example).
If you need them in the actual mailer class, use include ApplicationHelper, like so:
class NotificationMailer < ActionMailer::Base
include ApplicationHelper
# ... the rest of your mailer class.
end
From this other SO question.

Answer 3

This is a very old question, but I don't see the full answer, so I will try as I didn't find another resource.
It depends on what you are doing with the methods that have been defined in the helper module. If they are class methods, and everything that's not called on a specific instance seem to be a class methods for 3.2.13, you need to use
extend ApplicationHelper
if an instance methods
include ApplicationHelper
and if you want to use them in a mailer view
helper ApplicationHelper

Answer 4

You could try mixing in the required helper module:
class CommentMailer < ActionMailer::Base
include ApplicationHelper
end

Answer 5

Josh Pinter's answer is correct, but I discovered that it is not necessary.
What is necessary is to name the helper correctly.
NotificationMailerHelper is correct. NotificationMailersHelper (note the s) is not correct.
The class and filename of the helper must match and be correctly spelled.
Rails 3.2.2

Answer 6

include ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper worked for me in the Mailer controller (.rb file). This allowed me to use the pluralize helper in a Mailer controller action (helpers worked fine from the get go in Mailer views). None of the other answers worked, at least not on Rails 4.2

Answer 7

If you want to call helper method from ActionMailer you need to include helper (module) in Mailer file as, if Helper module name is “UserHelper”, then need to write following in Mailer file
class CommentMailer < ActionMailer::Base
default :from => "Andre Fournier <andre#gfournier.com>"
add_template_helper(UserHelper)
end
Or
class CommentMailer < ActionMailer::Base
default :from => "Andre Fournier <andre#gfournier.com>"
include UserHelper
end
Hope this is helpful.

Answer 8

The single method version of promoting a method to being a helper that is available in ApplicationController also works in ActionMailer:
class ApplicationMailer < ActionMailer::Base
helper_method :marketing_host
def marketing_host
"marketing.yoursite.com"
end
end
from there you can call marketing_host from any of your mailer views

Answer 9

I'm not sure exactly what you are doing here, but when I want to access current_user from a mailer, I make a mailer method that I pass the user to as an argument:
class CommentMailer < ActionMailer::Base
default :from => "Andre Fournier <andre#gfournier.com>"
def blog_comment(user)
#recipients = user.email
#from = "andre#gfournier.com"
#sent_on = Time.now
#timestamp = Time.now
#user = user
end
end
With the above, #user, as well as all the other instance variables, are accessible from inside the mailer views ./views/comment_mailer/blog_comment.html.erb and ./views/comment_mailer/blog_comment.text.erb
Separately, you can make a helper called
comment_mailer_helper.rb
and put into that helper any methods that you want to be available to your mailer's views. This seems to me more like what you might want, regarding helpers, because helpers are designed to help views, whereas a mailer is analogous to a controller.

Answer 10

None of the *_path helpers are accessible by default inside of an email. It is necessary instead to use the *_url form of the wanted helper. So, for instance, instead of using user_path(#user) it is necessary to use user_url(#user).
See at Action Mailer basics.

Answer 11

A hackish means of achieving what I wanted is to store the objects I need (current_user.name + current_user.email) in thread attributes, like so: Thread.current[:name] = current_user.name. Then in my mailer I just assigned new instance variables to those values stored in the thread: #name = Thread.current[:name]. This works, but it won't work if using something like delayed job.