coder-academy-notes

A collection of notes from my time at Coder Academy

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April 23rd

Covering:

  • Using a Mailing Service
  • Common Mailing Servers
  • Creating an Instagram Clone with Mailer

  • References

    SIGN UP FOR MAILGUN.COM BEFORE CONTINUING

    Using a Mailing Service

    Reasons you might want to include a mailing service in your web app:

  • Mailing list / subscription
  • Error messages to devs
  • Confirmation emails to users

  • Notification emails to users

    Common Mailing Servers

  • Mailgun

  • Sendgrid

  • Sign in > Domains > Sandbox domain
  • Click on Authorised Recipients > Invite New Recipient

  • In sandbox mode Mailgun will only send emails to Authorized Recipients

    Creating an Instagram Clone with Mailer

  • Use the Mailgun gem (SendGrid also have a gem)
  • rails new instarails_mailer
  • gem 'mailgun-ruby', '~> 1.1', '>= 1.1.9' and gem 'devise' in Gemfile
  • gem 'rspec-rails', '~> 3.7' and gem 'dotenv-rails', '~> 2.3' in the :development, :test group
  • bundle
  • rails g devise:install
  • rails g rspec:install
  • rails g devise User
  • rails db:migrate
  • Create .env.development file then add .env and .env.* files to .gitignore
  • Add MAILGUN_API_KEY=your_api_key to .env.development file with secret API key from Mailgun account
  • Add MAILGUN_DOMAIN=your_sandbox_domain to .env.development file with the sandbox domain from Mailgun website
  • In config > environments > development add: 
    config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :mailgun
config.action_mailer.mailgun_settings = {
  api_key: ENV.fetch('MAILGUN_API_KEY'),
  domain: ENV.fetch('MAILGUN_DOMAIN'),
}
  • Mailgun setup page has a curl code snippet to test sandbox from terminal
  • rails s to make sure everything works so far
  • rails g mailer ContactMailer to generate mailer files
  • Above command generated mailer.html.erb AND mailer.text.erb - the first is for HTML-based emails, the second is for text-only emails
  • Change details in application_mailer in mailers folder to: 
    default from: ENV.fetch('MAILGUN_EMAIL')
layout 'mailer'
  • Add your email address to .env.development as MAILGUN_EMAIL (make sure it is an Authorized email through Mailgun)
  • rails g controllers Pages home contact
  • Define the root path
  • In contact.html.erb add: 
    <%= form_for :contact do |f| %>
  <p>
      <%= f.label :name %><br/>
      <%= f.text_field :name %>
  </p>

  <p>
      <%= f.label :message %><br/>
      <%= f.text_area :message %>
  </p>

  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>
  • Add post '/contact', to: 'pages#contact_email' to routes file
  • In pages_controller: 
    def contact_email
  user = current_user
  message = email_params[:message]
  name = email_params[:name]
  user_info = {user: user, message: message, name: name}
  ContactMailer.send_contact_email(user_info).deliver_now
  render :contact
end

def email_params
  params.require(:contact).permit(:name, :message)
end

  • Deliver_now vs deliver_later : deliver now will deliver now, deliver later will set a job in memory to deliver later. If the rails server shuts down the memory is deleted and the job is never completed. Online servers will save deliver later jobs.

  • In contact-mailer.rb add: 
    def send_contact_email(user_info)
      recipient = ENV.fetch('MAILGUN_EMAIL')
      @user = user_info[:user]
      @name = user_info[:name]
      @message = user_info[:message]
      date = Time.now.strftime("%B %d, %Y, %A")
      subject = "New user message #{date}"
      mail(to: recipient, subject: subject)
end
  • Create send_contact_email.html.erb and send_contact_email.text.erb email templates in contact_mailer folder and add: ``` You have received a new message

From: <%= current_user.email %>

Name: <%= @name %>

Message: <%= @message %> ```

  • send_contact_email.html.erb version of the above form can include HTML tags - <h1>, <p>, <b> etc.
  • At the top of pages_controller before actions before_action :authenitcate_user!, except: [:home], will authenticate user login for every page except index.

References: