---
title: extending action_mailer
teaser: Using Jangomail for Rails emails.
tags: web,rails
author: Jared Carroll
published_on: 2008-02-28
---

Recently a client wanted to use a web-based email system called
[JangoMail](https://www.jangomail.com).  JangoMail allows you to send emails,
create distribution lists called groups, handle situations like bounces, etc.
It also provides some reporting features for all your email statistics.

JangoMail has an <abbr title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr> that
supports SOAP and also simple HTTP POST/GET requests.  I decided to go with the
POST version.

Now I didn't want to change all our email code from:

```ruby
Mailer.deliver_some_email @user
```

to:

```ruby
email = Mailer.create_some_email @user
JangoMail.send_mass_email email
```

Instead I wanted to extend `ActionMailer` to use `JangoMail`.

The `ActionMailer::Base#delivery_method` is used to determine how to send an
email. Currently it supports smtp, sendmail and test.  The delivery method is
set in your environment specific files:

In `config/environments/test.rb`:

```ruby
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :test
```

Now looking through `ActionMailer::Base` you find `#deliver!`.  Here's the
portion of it we care about:

```ruby
begin
  __send__("perform_delivery_#{delivery_method}", mail) if perform_deliveries
rescue Exception => e  # Net::SMTP errors or sendmail pipe errors
  raise e if raise_delivery_errors
end
```

It's going to send the mail object to its method named after the delivery
method.  So in order to extend it we're going to need to provide our own
`#peform_delivery_jango_mail` method.

What I want is

In: `config/environments/development.rb`:

```ruby
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :jango_mail
```

In: `config/initializers/jango_mail.rb`:

```ruby
require 'lib/jango_mail'

ActionMailer::Base.send :include, JangoMail
ActionMailer::Base.jango_mail_settings = {
  :username => "username",
  :password => "password",
  :url      => "https://api.jangomail.com/api.asmx"
}
```

In: `lib/jango_mail.rb`:

```ruby
module JangoMail
  def self.included(clazz)
    clazz.class_eval do
      cattr_accessor :jango_mail_settings
    end
  end

  def perform_delivery_jango_mail(mail)
    post_data = {
      "Username"      => jango_mail_settings[:username],
      "Password"      => jango_mail_settings[:password],
      "FromEmail"     => mail.from,
      "FromName"      => "",
      "ToGroups"      => "",
      "ToGroupFilter" => "",
      "ToOther"       => mail.to,
      "ToWebDatabase" => "",
      "Subject"       => mail.subject,
      "MessagePlain"  => mail.body,
      "MessageHTML"   => "",
      "Options"       => ""
    }
    uri = URI.parse "#{jango_mail_settings[:url]}/SendMassEmail"
    Net::HTTP.post_form uri, post_data
  end
end
```

SendMassEmail is the JangoMail <abbr title="Application Programming
Interface">API</abbr> call for sending an email, all the parameters are required
even if they're not being used.