# Send rendered page as email **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 29, 2008, 12:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456 "2008-01-29T12:59:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2008, 12:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456/1 "2008-01-29T12:59:35Z")
I feel like this is actually easy, but I haven’t been able to attack it from the right angle. A client wants “send to a friend” functionality that will allow a user to enter an email address to send the page to, and the app will send that rendered page in an email. The big issue I’m seeing is making sure all the relative URLs (assets and links) get rendered as absolute URLs. Unsurprisingly, the pages should be rendered as if there were no session and they are only GETs. I could use an external tool like wget or something to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that seems fragile. Has anyone done this? Can anyone point me to a plugin or something? Thanks, –Greg ---
**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456/2 "2008-01-29T15:43:36Z")
On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:58 AM, Gregory S. wrote: > absolute URLs. > > Unsurprisingly, the pages should be rendered as if there were no > session > and they are only GETs. I could use an external tool like wget or > something > to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that seems > fragile. > > Has anyone done this? Can anyone point me to a plugin or something? I did something similar once. I have a page that displays either an invoice or a receipt which has an option to email it to the recipient. I wanted the email to look just like the rendered page, so I used render\_to\_string to generate the output and then sent that in an html email. My code looks like this @invoice = Invoice.find(blah blah blah) output = render\_to\_string :template =\> ‘invoice/display’ begin email = UserMailer.create\_email\_invoice(@invoice, output, :invoice) email.set\_content\_type(‘text/html’) UserMailer.deliver(email) flash[:notice] = “Invoice #{@invoice.invoice\_number} has been emailed to #{@invoice.customer.name} (#{@invoice.customer.email}).” rescue Exception =\> e flash[:color] = ‘red’ flash[:notice] = e.message end the “output” variable is passed to the UserMailer and get used as the body of the message. It’s the same output that would get sent to the browser, but with one caveat. In the browser, you have the benefit of external CSS and Javascript files. In the HTML email, you have to include all of that (as far as I know anyway…maybe there is a way to do it). Hope that helps a least a little. Peace, Phillip ---
**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456/3 "2008-01-29T16:36:42Z")
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 08:42:09AM -0600, Phillip K. wrote: > > or something to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that > > @invoice = Invoice.find(blah blah blah) > > flash[:notice] = e.message > > end > > the “output” variable is passed to the UserMailer and get used as the > body of the message. It’s the same output that would get sent to the > browser, but with one caveat. In the browser, you have the benefit > of external CSS and Javascript files. In the HTML email, you have to > include all of that (as far as I know anyway…maybe there is a way > to do it). > > Hope that helps a least a little. Well, render\_to\_string is the obvious first step, but the problem is those assets (and links). I don’t think I mind the email loading the assets from the server (most email programs will require the user to accept loading images/assets from an external site, but that’s fine), but I need a way for those URLs to be fully-qualified. The HTML BASE tag might do it, but I’m not sure. Time to test some email programs (including, ugh, Outlook). > Peace, > Phillip > –Greg ---
**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456/4 "2008-01-29T17:16:55Z")
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:07:09AM -0600, Phillip K. wrote: > > > Phillip > > > –Greg > > Ah, I see your dilemma. One possibility, though I think it would be > a last resort, would be to write a helper to create an absolute URL > for all of the resource related helpers (link\_to, image\_tag, etc). > I’d like to think there is a simpler solution, though. I guess another possibility is using Hpricot to run through and make all the URLs absolute. Not marvelously efficient, but I don’t expect this to be a high-volume site. I just have to hit every element and make every src and href attribute absolute. > Peace, > Phillip > –Greg ---
**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/send-rendered-page-as-email/127456/5 "2008-01-29T17:07:29Z")
On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Gregory S. wrote: > but I’m > not sure. Time to test some email programs (including, ugh, Outlook). > > > Peace, > > Phillip > > –Greg Ah, I see your dilemma. One possibility, though I think it would be a last resort, would be to write a helper to create an absolute URL for all of the resource related helpers (link\_to, image\_tag, etc). I’d like to think there is a simpler solution, though. Peace, Phillip