ActionMailer with non-constant template

Rails
1

Hello,

The situation is that opposed to the classic setting (i.e. having an
.rhtml file as the email template) the e-mail template I am using to
send e-mail should be editable - i.e. there is a first version of the
template (in the DB, or as an .rhtml_, it does not matter), which the
user can edit from the Rails app, then the edited version should be
saved and used to send the email.

While I don’t think so this problem was not solved before, I was unable
to find anything after heaps of googling - it seems everyone is just
using the standard, one-html-for-all method.

So what’s the Rails way to do this?

Cheers,
Peter

__
http://www.rubyrailways.com
http://scrubyt.org

2

Hi Peter,
I would bet that this situation comes up a lot. The best way I’ve
found
to handle this is to have your template in the DB. You can use ERB to
process it like so:
email_body = ::ERB.new(email_template.gsub("[{%", “<%”).gsub("%}]","
%>"), nil, “”).result(binding)
The gsubs are used because I recommend using the string [{% instead of
<%.
This allows you to use a WYSIWYG editor with minimum headache. Given
that
your making an interface for changing the email templates, one assumes,
WYSIWYG is on the agenda too.

You still end up with a .rhtml file, but all in contains is <%=
email_body
%>

I’m sure others out there are doing something similar and would love to
hear
what they do.

Good Luck,
Rob K.

3

Peter,

I just finished putting up a blog post, my first, on how I did this.
Give it a read and let me know if it helped you at all.

http://blog.morwood.com/dynamic-actionmailer-content

Cheers,
Kevin

4

Peter,

URL correction…because Mephisto is not perfect (yet).

http://blog.morwood.com/2007/09/04/dynamic-actionmailer-content

Cheers,
Kevin