---
title: Delivering Email On Behalf Of Users
teaser:
tags: web,rails
author: Dan Croak
published_on: 2011-02-10
---

A recipe for a better user experience in emails sent between users via my Rails
app.

## Why

When I receive an email from an automated system like a Rails app, it can be
disorienting if the sender shows up in the email program as "admin" or
"donotreply".

What I want is something like this:

![image](http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/reply-to.png)

## Ingredients

* [ActionMailer](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html)
* The [`email_spec`](https://github.com/bmabey/email-spec) Ruby gem

## Install email-spec

I'm a fan of Ben Mabey's email-spec gem, so I'll install that:

    group :test do
      gem 'email_spec'
    end

I create a `features/support/email.rb` file:

    require 'email_spec' # add this line if you use spork
    require 'email_spec/cucumber'

Then generate some step definitions into
`features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb`:

    rails generate email_spec:steps

## Feature

Now I'll write my user story:

    Scenario: Guitarist shares song with guitarist
      Given the following user exists:
        | name         | email            |
        | Eric Clapton | eric@example.com |
      And I sign in as "eric@example.com/password"
      And I am on the share page for "Layla"
      When I fill in "Share with" with "jimi@example.com"
      And I press "Share Song"
      And "jimi@example.com" opens the email
      Then he should see "Eric Clapton" in the email "From" header
      And he should see "eric@example.com" in the email "Reply-To" header

## The "From" and "Reply-To" headers

I think the "From" and "Reply-To" headers can provide a better user experience.

I don't set the author's email as the "From" header because I hear it's bad
spam practice to send email on behalf of users in that way. ISPs use the From
header (among other things) to determine if the originator is sending spam.

## Making the feature pass

Ease my worried mind:

    class Mailer < ActionMailer::Base
      def share_song(song, friend)
        mail(
          to: friend.email,
          from: "#{song.artist.name} #{hello@mystartup.com}",
          reply_to: song.artist.email,
          subject: 'Good song'
        )
      end
    end

I've used this format so the sender's name shows up in the receiver's email
program:

    "Eric"

In this case, I want Jimi to be able to reply directly to Eric, so I've set the
"Reply-To" header to be the sender's address. I've explicitly not put the
sender's name in the "Reply-To" header because that doesn't work.

In other cases, I want the receiver to reply to the email and have that sent
through the Rails app, but that's a story for another day.