Basic Mailer

This example uses four different files:

The User model
The User mailer
The html template for the email
The plain-text template for the email

In this case, the user model calls the approved method in the mailer and passes the post that has been approved (the approved method in the model may be called by a callback, from a controller method, etc). Then, the mailer generates the email from either the html or plain-text template using the information from the passed-in post (e.g. the title). By default, the mailer uses the template with the same name as the method in the mailer (which is why both the mailer method and the templates have the name ‘approved’).

user_mailer.rb

class UserMailer < ActionMailer::Base
  default from: "donotreply@example.com"

  def approved(post)
      @title = post.title
      @user = post.user
      mail(to: @user.email, subject: "Your Post was Approved!")
  end
end

user.rb

def approved(post)
    UserMailer.approved(post)
end

approved.html.erb

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
      <title>Post Approved</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h2>Congrats <%= @user.name %>! Your post (#<%= @title %>) has been approved!</h2>
        <p>We look forward to your future posts!</p>
    </body>
</html>

approved.text.erb

Congrats <%= @user.name %>! Your post (#<%= @title %>) has been approved!
We look forward to your future posts!

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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