made ::View::TT and ::Mason hard deps. patches welcome if you no likey.

[catagits/Catalyst-View-Email.git] / README

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
                        username => 'username',
                        password => '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',
                bcc     => join ',', qw/hidden@secret.com hidden2@foobar.com/,
                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.},
                )
            ],
        };

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.