CodeIgniter ActionMailer

CodeIgniter’s Email library is pretty good… but it’s no ActionMailer.

Installation

First, copy libraries/ActionMailer.php to your app’s libraries directory. Copy libraries/MY_Loader.php to your app’s libraries directory too. If you already have one, copy the mailer() function.

Next, create the directory APPPATH/mailers, (parallel to libraries/ and views/ in your app). This directory will be home to your mailer classes.

Usage

ActionMailer aims to DRY sending email with CodeIgniter’s email class. A class method sets up the email. Mail contents are kept in views and autoloaded by class/method name. Email is delivered with one simple method call.

Example Mailer

You must use a lower case underscored filename, and a CamelCase class name:

// APPROOT/mailers/user_mailer.php

class UserMailer extends ActionMailer {
  function __construct()
  {
    parent::__construct();
    $this->from = 'noreply@example.com';
  }

  function account_created($user)
  {
    $this->to           = $user->email;
    $this->subject      = 'Account Created!';
    $this->body['url']  = "http://example.com";
    $this->body['name'] = $user->name;
  }

  // Send an email with attachments
  function new_photo($user, $path_to_image)
  {
    $this->to           = $user->email;
    $this->subject      = 'New Photo';
    $this->attachments  = array($path_to_image);
  }
}

Example Mailer View

View files are automatically rendered. They must be stored in a directory corresponding to your mailer’s filename (eg: user_mailer.php => user_mailer/). The view loaded for each message must correspond to that mailer’s method (eg: account_created() => account_created.php). Finally, views are loaded with data from the mailer’s $body (url and name above).

// APPROOT/views/user_mailer/account_created.php

Hello <?php echo $name; ?>,

Thanks for signing up. You can login at:

<?php echo $url; ?>

Sending Email

Load UserMailer with $this->load->mailer('user_mailer'). To send an email, prefix the mailer’s method with deliver_. Using the mailer above, deliver the account created message with (this obviously assumes you’ve already set $user in your own code):

$this->user_mailer->deliver_account_created($user);

Requirements

Sorry kids, PHP5 only. You should be ashamed of yourself if you’re using PHP4 anyway.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE in this repo.

Tags: CodeIgniter, Email, Git, PHP