scottymac / mail_view

Visual email testing

MailView -- Visual email testing

Preview plain text and html mail templates in your browser without redelivering it every time you make a change.

Install

Add the gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'mail_view', :git => 'https://github.com/scottymac/mail_view'

And run bundle install.

Usage

Since most emails do something interesting with database data, you'll need to write some scenarios to load messages with fake data. Its similar to writing mailer unit tests but you see a visual representation of the output instead.

class Notifier < ActionMailer::Base
  def invitation(inviter, invitee)
    # ...
  end

  def welcome(user)
    # ...
  end

  class Preview < MailView
    # Pull data from existing fixtures
    def invitation
      account = Account.first
      inviter, invitee = account.users[0, 2]
      Notifier.invitation(inviter, invitee)
      # ::Notifier.invitation(inviter, invitee)  # May need to call with '::'
    end

    # Factory-like pattern
    def welcome
      user = User.create!
      mail = Notifier.welcome(user)
      user.destroy
      mail
    end
  end
end

Methods must return a Mail or TMail object. Using ActionMailer, call Notifier.create_action_name(args) to return a compatible TMail object. Now on ActionMailer 3.x, Notifier.action_name(args) will return a Mail object.

Routing

A mini router middleware is bundled for Rails 2.x support.

# config/environments/development.rb
config.middleware.use MailView::Mapper, [Notifier::Preview]

For Rails³ you can map the app inline in your routes config.

# config/routes.rb
if Rails.env.development?
  mount Notifier::Preview => 'mail_view'
end

Now just load up http://localhost:3000/mail_view.

Interface