Link to stylesheet from HTML email?

Rails
1

I am using actionMailer to send out an HTML email. This is working
fine. I need to style it though…

Is there a way to link to a remote stylesheet I have in my public/
stylesheets Dir?

Thanks, Elliott

2

For best compatibility with email clients and other client factors its
best to put the styles in the email. This way the client can’t deny
the download of the stylesheet… If you have images you might be sol
but that’s a risk you have to take. Styling your email so that it
looks good with/without images is a good practice

3

heimdull wrote:

For best compatibility with email clients and other client factors its
best to put the styles in the email.
[…]

Better yet, don’t use HTML e-mail. Generally speaking, e-mail works
better the closer it stays to plain text.

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

4

heimdull wrote:

For best compatibility with email clients and other client factors its
best to put the styles in the email. This way the client can’t deny
the download of the stylesheet… If you have images you might be sol
but that’s a risk you have to take. Styling your email so that it
looks good with/without images is a good practice

In the space provided -> [ ]

…please explain why Rails can’t share a partial between an email and a
view.

(Or, uh, do I misunderstand the system?)

–
Phlip

5

I appreciate with Marnen Laibow-Koser, if the requirements concern you
can give remote path to your images and stylesheet.

6

I hear what you guys are saying on staying away from HTML emails…
However if I do want to link to an image or stylesheet in /public/*
from the email how would I do that?

Thanks again, Elliott

7

On Jun 18, 6:37 am, elliottg [email protected] wrote:

However if I do want to link to an image or stylesheet in /public/*
from the email how would I do that?

You would just link to images or stylesheets in your ActionMailer view
in the same way as you usually would.

And I know you say you want to, but bear in mind that linking in an
external stylesheet will fail for most email clients. At the very
minimum you will need to include the CSS inside a tag within
the email, and for clients including GMail and Outlook you will
actually have to include the CSS within the style attribute of the
HTML tags.

-Matt

8

Thanks a ton for the info and insight guys!

Elliott

9

Matt is right on the money. Images are not a big deal, simply
link them as you would for any html using the full
http://mysite.com/images/picture.jpg
path.

And make sure (as stated above) that the email still is representable
without the images
because they do not load by default for a large majority of the
recipients.

10

My app sends multipart/alternative html (with embedded images) and
text emails and lets the client choose.

Here’s how I set things up. I take no credit for this - it’s a combo
of ideas I found while searching for a solution. On the shoulders of
giants and all that.

I’m running 2.3.2.

Install Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

I ended up creating lib/premailer/ and putting the files in there
since they need to be edited a little.

In premailer.rb, change initialize to take an HTML string instead of a
URL.

class UserNotify < ActionMailer::Base
public
def portfolio_data(user,portfolios)

 # ... set up your subject, target, etc ...

  content_type "multipart/alternative"

  part "text/plain" do |p|
    p.body = render_message('portfolio_data.text.plain.erb',@body)
    p.transfer_encoding = "base64"   # VERY IMPORTANT
  end

  @parts << UserNotify.create_portfolio_html_data(@body)

end

embed images in the email.

convert HTML with stylesheets to HTML with style attributes

def portfolio_html_data(body)
content_type “multipart/related”

yahoo_cid = Time.now.sec.to_s + "_yahoo"
google_cid = Time.now.sec.to_s + "_google"

part "text/html" do |p|
  pm = Premailer.new(render_message

(‘portfolio_data.text.html.erb’,body))
m = pm.to_inline_css
pm.warnings.each do |warning|
clients = (warning[:clients] && (" (" << warning[:clients] <<
“)”)) || “”
RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.warn(“Premailer warning: #{warning
[:level]}: #{warning[:message]}#{clients}”)
end
# RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.debug(“\n\n\nm:\n#{m}\n\n”)
m.gsub!(/src=“#{PortfolioHelper::YAHOO_IMG}[^”]“/,“src="cid:#
{yahoo_cid}"”)
m.gsub!(/src=”#{PortfolioHelper::GOOGLE_IMG}[^"]"/,“src="cid:#
{google_cid}"”)
p.body = m
p.transfer_encoding = “base64” # VERY IMPORTANT
end

f = File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/public#

{PortfolioHelper::YAHOO_IMG}",“rb”)
inline_attachment :content_type => “image/gif”,
:body => f.read,
:filename => “yahoo.gif”,
:cid => “<#{yahoo_cid}>”
f.close

f = File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/public#

{PortfolioHelper::GOOGLE_IMG}",“rb”)
inline_attachment :content_type => “image/gif”,
:body => f.read,
:filename => “google.gif”,
:cid => “<#{google_cid}>”
f.close
end

end

portfolio_data.text.html.erb looks roughly like this:

<%=File.read("#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/stylesheets/porb.css")-%> ...

This works well for me. Images embed, css gets inlined, client gets to
choose whether it wants text or html. I ought to do the next step and
use the html_to_text stuff in premailer but I already had the text
template written.

If there’s a better way to pull all this stuff together I’m all ears.

-Chris

11

One more question for you guys…

This is the first time I have used actionMailer and the corresponding
templates. In my case I was noticing that email would not be sent out
as expected unless I had both an “email_view.text.html.erb” and
“email_view.text.plain.erb” view file in the app. Is this really how
it works?

Is the flow something like this…?

If the email client doesn’t support the HTML version is Rails smart
enough to serve the plain text version instead?

Thanks

12

Thanks Chris.

I’ll have to look into that in depth.

Ellliott