MailForm
Rails 5
This gem was built on top of ActiveModel to showcase how you can pull in validations, naming and i18n from Rails to your models without the need to implement it all by yourself.
This README refers to the MailForm gem to be used in Rails 5+. For instructions on how to use MailForm in older versions of Rails, please refer to the available branches.
Description
MailForm allows you to send an e-mail straight from a form. For instance, if you want to make a contact form just the following lines are needed (including the e-mail):
class ContactForm < MailForm::Base
attribute :name, :validate => true
attribute :email, :validate => /\A([\w\.%\+\-]+)@([\w\-]+\.)+([\w]{2,})\z/i
attribute :file, :attachment => true
attribute :message
attribute :nickname, :captcha => true
# Declare the e-mail headers. It accepts anything the mail method
# in ActionMailer accepts.
def headers
{
:subject => "My Contact Form",
:to => "[email protected]",
:from => %("#{name}" <#{email}>)
}
end
end
Then you start a console with rails console and type:
>> c = ContactForm.new(:name => 'José', :email => '[email protected]', :message => 'Cool!')
>> c.deliver
Check your inbox and the e-mail will be there, with the sent fields (assuming that you configured your mailer delivery method properly).
MailForm::Base
When you inherit from MailForm::Base, it pulls down a set of stuff from ActiveModel, as ActiveModel::Validation, ActiveModel::Translation and ActiveModel::Naming.
This brings I18n, error messages, validations and attributes handling like in ActiveRecord to MailForm, so MailForm can be used in your controllers and form builders without extra tweaks. This also means that instead of the following:
attribute :email, :validate => /\A([\w\.%\+\-]+)@([\w\-]+\.)+([\w]{2,})\z/i
You could actually do this:
attribute :email
validates_format_of :email, :with => /\A([\w\.%\+\-]+)@([\w\-]+\.)+([\w]{2,})\z/i
Choose the one which pleases you the most. For more information on the API, please continue reading below.
Playing together ORMs
MailForm plays nice with ORMs as well. You just need to include MailForm::Delivery in your model and declare which attributes should be sent:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
include MailForm::Delivery
append :remote_ip, :user_agent, :session
attributes :name, :email, :created_at
def headers
{
:to => "[email protected]",
:subject => "User created an account"
}
end
end
The delivery will be triggered in an after_create hook.
Installation
Install MailForm is very easy. Just edit your Gemfile adding the following:
gem 'mail_form'
Then run bundle install to install MailForm.
If you want it as plugin, just do:
script/plugin install git://github.com/plataformatec/mail_form.git
API Overview
attributes(*attributes)
Declare your form attributes. All attributes declared here will be appended to the e-mail, except the ones :captcha is true.
Options:
-
:validate - A hook to validates_*_of. When true is given, validates the presence of the attribute. When a regexp, validates format. When array, validates the inclusion of the attribute in the array.
Whenever :validate is given, the presence is automatically checked. Give :allow_blank => true to override.
Finally, when :validate is a symbol, the method given as symbol will be called. Then you can add validations as you do in ActiveRecord (errors.add).
-
:attachment - When given, expects a file to be sent and attaches it to the e-mail. Don't forget to set your form to multitype.
-
:captcha - When true, validates the attributes must be blank. This is a simple way to avoid spam and the input should be hidden with CSS.
Examples:
class ContactForm < MailForm::Base
attributes :name, :validate => true
attributes :email, :validate => /\A([\w\.%\+\-]+)@([\w\-]+\.)+([\w]{2,})\z/i
attributes :type, :validate => ["General", "Interface bug"]
attributes :message
attributes :screenshot, :attachment => true, :validate => :interface_bug?
attributes :nickname, :captcha => true
def interface_bug?
if type == 'Interface bug' && screenshot.nil?
self.errors.add(:screenshot, "can't be blank on interface bugs")
end
end
end
c = ContactForm.new(:nickname => 'not_blank', :email => '[email protected]', :name => 'José')
c.valid? #=> true
c.spam? #=> true (raises an error in development, to remember you to hide it)
c.deliver #=> false (just delivers if is not a spam and is valid, raises an error in development)
c = ContactForm.new(:email => 'invalid')
c.valid? #=> false
c.errors.inspect #=> { :name => :blank, :email => :invalid }
c.errors.full_messages #=> [ "Name can't be blank", "Email is invalid" ]
c = ContactForm.new(:name => 'José', :email => '[email protected]')
c.deliver
append(*methods)
MailForm also makes easy to append request information from client to the sent mail. You just have to do:
class ContactForm < MailForm::Base
append :remote_ip, :user_agent, :session
# ...
end
And in your controller:
@contact_form = ContactForm.new(params[:contact_form])
@contact_form.request = request
The remote ip, user agent and session will be sent in the e-mail in a request information session. You can give to append any method that the request object responds to.
I18n
I18n in MailForm works like in ActiveRecord, so all models, attributes and messages can be used with localized. Below is an I18n file example file:
mail_form:
models:
contact_form: "Your site contact form"
attributes:
contact_form:
email: "E-mail"
telephone: "Telephone number"
message: "Sent message"
request:
title: "Technical information about the user"
remote_ip: "IP Address"
user_agent: "Browser"
Custom e-mail template
To customize the e-mail template that is used create a file called contact.erb in app/views/mail_form. Take a look at lib/mail_form/views/mail_form/contact.erb in this repo to see how the default template works.
Maintainers
- José Valim - http://github.com/josevalim
- Carlos Antonio - http://github.com/carlosantoniodasilva
Contributors
- Andrew Timberlake - http://github.com/andrewtimberlake
Bugs and Feedback
If you discover any bug, please use github issues tracker.
Copyright (c) 2009-2019 Plataformatec http://plataformatec.com.br/
