ActionMailer attaching generated files

Rails
1

I have a script that is running as a runner script, its job is to find
reports that have recently been published and send emails to the users
notifying them of the reports. The reports are available online, but
are also available via a generated PDF which the users can see by
tacking on .pdf to the end of their URL.

I want to attach the pdf to the email that the runner script sends
out. The problem I’m facing is that the runner script cannot ‘find’
the pdf and I dont know why - here are my guesses:

  1. You have to authenticate to see the pdf reports (which is true, but
    im not sure if the action mailer needs to authenticate and cannot do
    that?)

  2. I am only able to use the path of the pdf, not the full url. The
    pdf is available through a url obviously, but the url contains a
    subdomain - but because this is a runner script that runs behind the
    scenes, it has no context and therefor cannot determine the URL.

I’m not sure which one is causing the failure, anyone have any ideas?

2

On Jan 31, 4:48 pm, Ryan A. [email protected] wrote:

  1. You have to authenticate to see the pdf reports (which is true, but
    im not sure if the action mailer needs to authenticate and cannot do
    that?)

  2. I am only able to use the path of the pdf, not the full url. The
    pdf is available through a url obviously, but the url contains a
    subdomain - but because this is a runner script that runs behind the
    scenes, it has no context and therefor cannot determine the URL.

Are you trying to attach the pdf by giving actionmailer the path from
the url that generates the pdf (ie /some_controller/some_id/
generate.pdf or similar) ? That sounds very roundabout, and just out
of the box you need to give actionmailer a path to an actual file on
disk. You’d be far better off invoking the actual pdf generation code
from your script.

Fred

Fred

3

Yes I am attempting to basically give it a URL, I’m not sure how else
to do it…

On Feb 1, 3:27 am, Frederick C. [email protected]

4

On Feb 10, 5:30 am, Ryan A. [email protected] wrote:

Yes I am attempting to basically give it a URL, I’m not sure how else
to do it…

Well you’ve got code to generate a pdf document, use that to save it
as a temporary file and attach that temporary file to the email.

Fred

5

Ryan A. wrote:

Yes I am attempting to basically give it a URL, I’m not sure how else
to do it…

On Feb 1, 3:27�am, Frederick C. [email protected]

Why are you mailing the PDF files anyway? The URL should be sufficient.

Best,
–Â
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]