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/37signals/mail_view.git'
  # or
  gem "mail_view", "~> 1.0.3"

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. It's similar to writing mailer unit tests but you see a visual representation of the output instead.

  # app/mailers/mail_preview.rb or lib/mail_preview.rb
  class MailPreview < MailView
    # Pull data from existing fixtures
    def invitation
      account = Account.first
      inviter, invitee = account.users[0, 2]
      Notifier.invitation(inviter, invitee) 
    end

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

    # Stub-like
    def forgot_password
      user = Struct.new(:email, :name).new('[email protected]', 'Jill Smith')
      mail = UserMailer.forgot_password(user)
    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.

To also mail an actual email, just add "?email=[email protected]" to the URL query string. For example, if "http://.../invitation" is a MailPreview path, then "http://.../invitation?email=[email protected]" will display the MailPreview AND send an actual email to [email protected]. (Unless overridden, the email's from and to addresses will be the specified address.)

Routing

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

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

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

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

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

Interface