My software sends emails for users. I want to show them what the emails will look like before they get sent. However, with ActionMailer conventions, the entire template is in one file. This means the html,head,body tags, etc. Can anyone think of a good way to give my users a preview of what the emails I send out will look like?
Thanks!
I had the same issue. I built out the display with the associated model I was sending rather than in the mailer. I was able to feed sample data or live data to display it to the user.
when it came time to actually send it, I rendered the exact same thing within the mailer view
EDIT:
I apologize for the crap variable names in advance. I am not sure I am allowed to explicitly talk about them :)
Lets say I have a BarMailer function called foo(status,bar)
where status is a test email or a live email and bar is my associated model.
I called deliver_foo("test",bar)
deliver_foo sends out a multipart message so for each part I render_message and pass along variables I need. for example:
p.body = render_message('bar_html', :bar => bar, :other_data => bar.other_data)
so, that render_message is is saying to specifically use the bar_html view (I also have a bar_text for plain text).
this is the contents of my bar_html view:
<%=render :inline => #bar.some_parent.some_other_model.html, :locals => {:other_data => #other_data, :time => Time.now, :bar => #bar }%>
Its a little complicated, but it is based on a template system. By rendering inline everywhere, I am able to use the same code for a number of different functions including previewing and sending. I like this because it becomes a WYSIWIG. No extra code or functionality that could be buggy and muck with the potential output in an email. If it works in one area, it will work in the other. Plus keeping it DRY means I am not going to forget to modify a copy (which I would do frequently, hehe).
Related
I've got a form to build a Document. That form needs adjusting depending on what type of Document a user has chosen. At this point I've got a deferring kind of method in new.html.erb that goes like this:
<%= render 'form_'+#template.label.downcase.parameterize.underscore %>
Which works fine but it's kinda difficult to manage though because when new types of documents are added I need to create actual HTML files and upload them.
Is there a better way to manage this kind of form generation? A view with hundreds of if statements in it feels cumbersome too.
You can push it to document_helper or decorator like :
module DocumentHelper
def form_render
return 'form_#{type}'
end
end
I'm working on a personal RoR project with an interesting sort of problem: the whole app only needs one HTML template.
Basically, the whole app is presented through HTML5 canvas (it's going to be a game of sorts). But I'd still like there to be URLs for accessing specific resources, such as '/player/1'.
So what's the best, DRYest way to do this? I'd really hate to specify the template in every action in the controllers.
render :file => "layout_file", :layout => false
You could define your view in app/views/layout/application.html.erb and leave all the others empty, but that wouldn't avoid the reloading of pages.
You should also have all your methods respond in json format.
Or just an old good:
render :nothing => true
at the end of your methods.
Our app has "notifications" which you view through your inbox on the site, and can also get email to tell you about them. When you receive a notification, it contains a link to reply to the message in question. That might mean sending a PM back to the sender of the original message, or might mean leaving a comment on a post.
This is the code to figure out what reply link to use:
if #notification.post
# comment on the post in question
#reply_link = new_comment_path(:post_id => #notification.post.id)
else
# by default, reply link sends a PM in return
#reply_link = new_notification_path(
:recipient_id => #notification.sender.id,
:subject => #notification.subject =~ /^Re: / ?
#notification.subject :
"Re: " + #notification.subject
)
end
I took that from our controller code, btw: app/controllers/notifications_controller.rb
Now we want to include the same reply link in our email notifications, which means we need to do the same sort of reply link generation in app/mailers/notifier.rb
I don't want to repeat myself, so I would rather create a reply_link method and put it somewhere where both the controller and the mailer can access it.
My first thought was to put it in the model, so that we could have Notification.reply_link. That'd be nice, but it doesn't work because we need new_comment_path and new_notification_path which aren't available in the model.
My second thought was to use a helper, but a) everyone seems to think that helpers suck, and b) we couldn't get it to work anyway.
So, where should I be putting this handy reply_link method, so that it will be accessible to both the controller and the mailer, and in keeping with good coding practices?
Extract it to a module and 'mix it in' to access it in both places you need it.
You can put the module anywhere you like: the lib folder has been a historically popular place, or create a 'modules' folder in your app directory.
Put it in /app/helpers or /lib
I generally tend to put methods accessed from controllers in helpers
I've got articles that can be shown in lots of different sites. They can either be visible or not.
I've ended up going for a single bitmasked permission field in the article, rather than lots of has_many permissions separate records.
I'm not sure how best to set this field. What I've done so far is write two methods in the article model - one gives you a hash of {1 => 'true', 2 => 'true', 3 => 'false'} - visible or not on site 1, 2, 3. The second method takes a similar hash and sets the permission field correctly.
I can send the permission hash to my view through the controller, and I can make checkboxes that show if the article is visible or not. These appear on a pop up dialog using jquery. I haven't done it yet, but I think I can use javascript to make a hash to send back.
But I don't know how to make the update controller take the hash from the params, send it to my make permission method and then put that into the params again to update my article.
How would I go about doing this? Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely.
Any ideas?
I would suggest you to create a Site model which reproduces the different sites. This is especially a good thing if there might come up more websites! Then you could build a has_and_belongs_to_many association between the Site and the Article model to commit on which site an article should be displayed!
If I will send 100 email to the registered user and I want to know if users open email or not
How can I do this using Ruby on Rails?
The only way to do this, is to use html email with a tracker image. You need to include a user specific image into the code.
class TrackingController < ApplicationController
def image
# do something with params[:id]
send_file "/path/to/an/image"
end
end
add the following route:
# Rails 2
map.tracking_image "tracking_image/:id.gif", :controller => 'tracking', :action => image
# Rails 3
match 'products/:id', :to => 'tracking#image', :as => "tracking_image"
# Rails 4 (match without verb is deprecated)
get 'producsts/:id' => 'tracking#image', as: 'tracking_image'
# or
match 'producsts/:id' => 'tracking#image', as: 'tracking_image', via: :get
in your email template something like this:
<%= image_tag tracking_image_url(#user.id) %>
But be aware, that this it's not guaranteed that the user reads the email and loads the image, some email clients don't load images, until the user wants to. And If he doesn't you can't do anything about this. Also if the user uses text mail only this won't work neither.
Short answer, You can't. Slightly longer answer You can't reliably.
Using something like VERP you can automate the the bounce processing, to get a fairly good idea if the far end mail server accepted the email. But after that all bets are off. You can't really tell what the email server did with it, (route it to junk/spam folder, put in inbox, silently drop it on the floor/bit bucket, etc..). You could enable read-receipt headers in your email, but that is client specific (and people like me eat/deny them). You can look into using a web bug, for example customize each email with an HTML file, that pulls a remote image, that has a unique id associated with it, but again client specific, most will not load remote images. So unless the email bounces there is no 100% reliable way to tell what happens to the email after it leaves your server.
I am not very familiar with ruby but have written multiple mass mailer apps. You can use a webbug image to get an approximate open rate. Basically it is just a one pixel or transparent image with some tracking information:
<img src="http://mysite/trackingimage.gif?email=x&customer=y">
What I do is make a directory called trackingimage.gif with an index in it that reads and stores the url params and then relocates to the real image.