Catalyst::View::Email(3p)

NAME
Catalyst::View::Email - Send Email from Catalyst

SYNOPSIS
This module sends out emails from a stash key specified in the configuration settings.

CONFIGURATION
WARNING: since version 0.10 the configuration options slightly changed!

Use the helper to create your View:

    $ script/myapp_create.pl view Email Email

In your app configuration:

    __PACKAGE__->config(
        'View::Email' => {
            # Where to look in the stash for the email information.
            # 'email' is the default, so you don't have to specify it.
            stash_key => 'email',
            # Define the defaults for the mail
            default => {
                # Defines the default content type (mime type). Mandatory
                content_type => 'text/plain',
                # Defines the default charset for every MIME part with the
                # content type text.
                # According to RFC2049 a MIME part without a charset should
                # be treated as US-ASCII by the mail client.
                # If the charset is not set it won't be set for all MIME parts
                # without an overridden one.
                # Default: none
                charset => 'utf-8'
            },
            # Setup how to send the email
            # all those options are passed directly to Email::Sender::Simple
            sender => {
                # if mailer doesn't start with Email::Sender::Simple::Transport::,
                # then this is prepended.
                mailer => 'SMTP',
                # mailer_args is passed directly into Email::Sender::Simple
                mailer_args => {
                    host     => 'smtp.example.com', # defaults to localhost
                    sasl_username => 'sasl_username',
                    sasl_password => 'sasl_password',
            }
          }
        }
    );

NOTE ON SMTP
If you use SMTP and don't specify host, it will default to localhost and attempt delivery. This often means an email will sit in a queue and not be delivered.

SENDING EMAIL
Sending email is just filling the stash and forwarding to the view:

    sub controller : Private {
        my ( $self, $c ) = @_;

        $c->stash->{email} = {
            to      => 'jshirley@gmail.com',
            cc      => 'abraxxa@cpan.org',
            from    => 'no-reply@foobar.com',
            subject => 'I am a Catalyst generated email',
            body    => 'Body Body Body',
        };

        $c->forward( $c->view('Email') );
    }

Alternatively you can use a more raw interface and specify the headers as an array reference like it is passed to Email::MIME::Creator. Note that you may also mix both syntaxes if you like ours better but need to specify additional header attributes. The attributes are appended to the header array reference without overwriting contained ones.

    $c->stash->{email} = {
        header => [
            To      => 'jshirley@gmail.com',
            Cc      => 'abraxxa@cpan.org',
            Bcc     => join ',', qw/hidden@secret.com hidden2@foobar.com/,
            From    => 'no-reply@foobar.com',
            Subject => 'Note the capitalization differences',
        ],
        body => qq{Ain't got no body, and nobody cares.},
        # Or, send parts
        parts => [
            Email::MIME->create(
                attributes => {
                    content_type => 'text/plain',
                    disposition  => 'attachment',
                    charset      => 'US-ASCII',
                },
                body => qq{Got a body, but didn't get ahead.},
            )
        ],
    };

You can set the envelope sender and recipient as well:

  $c->stash->{email} = {

    envelope_from => 'envelope-from@example.com',
    from          => 'header-from@example.com',

    envelope_to   => [ 'foo@example.com', 'bar@example.com' ],
    to            => 'Undisclosed Recipients:;',

    ...
  };

HANDLING ERRORS
If the email fails to send, the view will die (throw an exception). After your forward to the view, it is a good idea to check for errors:

    $c->forward( $c->view('Email') );

    if ( scalar( @{ $c->error } ) ) {
        $c->error(0); # Reset the error condition if you need to
        $c->response->body('Oh noes!');
    } else {
        $c->response->body('Email sent A-OK! (At least as far as we can tell)');
    }

USING TEMPLATES FOR EMAIL
Now, it's no fun to just send out email using plain strings. Take a look at Catalyst::View::Email::Template to see how you can use your favourite template engine to render the mail body.

METHODS

new Validates the base config and creates the Email::Sender::Simple object for later use by process.

process($c)
    The process method does the actual processing when the view is dispatched to.

    This method sets up the email parts and hands off to Email::Sender::Simple to handle the actual email delivery.

setup_attributes($c, $attr)
    Merge attributes with the configured defaults. You can override this method to return a structure to pass into generate_message which subsequently passes the return value of this method to Email::MIME->create under the "attributes" key.

generate_message($c, $attr)
    Generate a message part, which should be an Email::MIME object and return it.

    Takes the attributes, merges with the defaults as necessary and returns a message object.

TROUBLESHOOTING
As with most things computer related, things break. Email even more so. Typically any errors are going to come from using SMTP as your sending method, which means that if you are having trouble the first place to look is at Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP. This module is just a wrapper for Email::Sender::Simple, so if you get an error on sending, it is likely from there anyway.

If you are using SMTP and have troubles sending, whether it is authentication or a very bland "Can't send" message, make sure that you have Net::SMTP and, if applicable, Net::SMTP::SSL installed.

It is very simple to check that you can connect via Net::SMTP, and if you do have sending errors the first thing to do is to write a simple script that attempts to connect. If it works, it is probably something in your configuration so double check there. If it doesn't, well, keep modifying the script and/or your mail server configuration until it does!

SEE ALSO

  Catalyst::View::Email::Template - Send fancy template emails with Cat

  Catalyst::Manual - The Catalyst Manual

  Catalyst::Manual::Cookbook - The Catalyst Cookbook

AUTHORS
J. Shirley <jshirley@gmail.com>

Alexander Hartmaier <abraxxa@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTORS
(Thanks!)

Matt S Trout

Daniel Westermann-Clark

Simon Elliott <cpan@browsing.co.uk>

Roman Filippov

Lance Brown <lance@bearcircle.net>

Devin Austin <dhoss@cpan.org>

Chris Nehren <apeiron@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2007 - 2009 the Catalyst::View::Email "AUTHORS" and "CONTRIBUTORS" as listed above.

LICENSE
This library is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.