The RailsNotes Newsletter 🟥 ISSUE #21

🟥 ISSUE #21 (Better Mailer Previews, POODR Giveaway, Devise mailers and more!)

Author

Harrison Broadbent
December 09, 2023

Your mailer previews won’t ever be this good, but my new gem gets you pretty close 😉 🤪 

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Welcome to The RailsNotes Newsletter — Issue #21! In this issue, we’re talking mailer previews!

Hello! It’s great to be back after a week off. If you follow me on Twitter, you’d know it’s been a pretty busy week for me, mainly due to the launch of my new gem! Better Mailer Previews is a gem that builds on native Rails mailer previews and makes them more powerful and robust.

Because of that, this edition is all about mailer previews too! I’ve written about them in the past, plus I found a couple of other handy articles about them which I think you’ll like.

Finally, I’m running a 🎄 Christmas giveaway! I’m giving away 2 copies of POODR (practical object-oriented design, using Ruby), a Ruby book I read and loved ❤️‍🔥 this year. Earn 1 entry for each subscriber you refer (and each new subscriber gets an entry too!). There’s more info on referrals at the end of this newsletter + your special link!

I’m giving away 2 copies of POODR (great book) — each subscriber you refer will give you an entry into the draw!

I’ll do the draw on Christmas day (25th December), and get in contact with you to organize delivery (if you don’t respond within 3 days, I’ll draw another winner in your place). This giveaway is open to anyone in the world! No matter where you live, I’ll do my best to get a copy delivered to you.

With all that out of the way, let’s get into it!

~ ✨ FEATURED ARTICLE ✨ ~

I bet you’ve never seen mailer previews like this before 😉 

I’ve released a new gem! This gem was born from my frustrations with native Rails Mailer previews, which I use extensively when I build email templates and components for RailsNotes UI.

It does a couple of really handy things, namely —

  • Shows all your previews live on the homepage

  • Easily resize individual mailers, for testing responsive layouts

  • Forward your previews to an email address (uses the default ActionMailer delivery method for your app).

  • Fully compatible with, and can live alongside, native Rails ActionMailer Previews

The Rails community on Twitter seemed to love it, and I hope you will too!

It’s completely free, and just a fun little way to give back to the Rails community and scratch my itch along the way. If you find any bugs or have any feature requests, open an issue on the repository and I’ll get back to you!

Alongside my gem, I’ve done a deep dive into the world of email previewing in Rails. I cover native mailer previews, but also look at a couple of other great tools for previewing — Letter Opener, MailCatcher and MailHog.

If you work with lots of emails, it’s a handy article to learn about the options in your previewing purview.

This is a great little intro to Rails ActionMailer previews (if you’ve never used them before!).

Josh walks you through generating and using them (since they need a little bit of setup) and gives a great overview of them.

Another handy article from Josh! I used this recently to setup ActionMailer emails and previews in a new project I’m working on 👀 

Worth a quick read if you use Devise, and want to be able to preview those emails too.

~ ⚒️ HANDY TIP ~ 

→ Generate Devise mailer views

Devise comes with built-in mailer views, but you can also override them with your own!

The following command will generate all the mailer views for Devise, which you can then edit yourself (and turn into something that looks pretty great by using RailsNotes UI 😉) 

rails generate devise:views -v mailer

~👀BEHIND THE SCENES~ 

This is a private section 🔐 for readers with 2+ referrals!

I share behind-the-scenes updates on RailsNotes and RailsNotes UI (think traffic numbers, sales, upcoming updates etc.)

Want access? Learn about the ✨ referral program ✨ down below! 👇️ 

This fortnight has been pretty light on (busy with work and end-of-year stuff!). The main thing was releasing a new template family for RailsNotes UI — 

This was exciting to release, and I’m hoping to get another template out before the end of the year! Otherwise, I’ve put a fresh coat of paint on my Rails app template; I’m just finishing off the billing integration, then we should be close to launch time!

~ 🌯 WRAP UP ~ 

Thanks for reading! The quick wrap up for this week is — 

  1. I’ve released a new gem for better ActionMailer email previews!

  2. I’m running a giveaway up until Christmas day! Refer people to this newsletter to enter, for your chance to win a copy of POODR 📚️ 

  3. This newsletter now has a referral program! Show me your support by referring people to read my newsletter (using your special link), and get cool rewards (I’m also very open to feedback if you think the rewards are, actually, not cool 🙃 )

→ Thank you to Pedro from Kazap for referring a subscriber to the RailsNotes newsletter! 🙏 🥇 

Share the RailsNotes Newsletter!

Use your unique link below to refer new Ruby on Rails devs to this newsletter, and to support me. I’ll reward you with coupon codes, a private section, and a free RailsNotes UI license key 👇️ 

  • [Refer 1] A small feature in the next newsletter (with a link to something you’re working on, or your socials)

  • [Refer 2] Permanent access to the behind-the-scenes section, above 👆️ 

  • [Refer 5] A $20 coupon for RailsNotes UI 📬️ 

  • [Refer 15] Free licence key for RailsNotes UI 🤑