I feel like this is actually easy, but I haven’t been able to attack it
from the right angle. A client wants “send to a friend” functionality
that
will allow a user to enter an email address to send the page to, and the
app will send that rendered page in an email. The big issue I’m seeing
is
making sure all the relative URLs (assets and links) get rendered as
absolute URLs.
Unsurprisingly, the pages should be rendered as if there were no session
and they are only GETs. I could use an external tool like wget or
something
to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that seems fragile.
Has anyone done this? Can anyone point me to a plugin or something?
Thanks,
–Greg
On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:58 AM, Gregory S. wrote:
absolute URLs.
Unsurprisingly, the pages should be rendered as if there were no
session
and they are only GETs. I could use an external tool like wget or
something
to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that seems
fragile.
Has anyone done this? Can anyone point me to a plugin or something?
I did something similar once. I have a page that displays either an
invoice or a receipt which has an option to email it to the
recipient. I wanted the email to look just like the rendered page,
so I used render_to_string to generate the output and then sent that
in an html email. My code looks like this
@invoice = Invoice.find(blah blah blah)
output = render_to_string :template => ‘invoice/display’
begin
email = UserMailer.create_email_invoice(@invoice, output, :invoice)
email.set_content_type(‘text/html’)
UserMailer.deliver(email)
flash[:notice] = “Invoice #{@invoice.invoice_number} has been
emailed to #{@invoice.customer.name} (#{@invoice.customer.email}).”
rescue Exception => e
flash[:color] = ‘red’
flash[:notice] = e.message
end
the “output” variable is passed to the UserMailer and get used as the
body of the message. It’s the same output that would get sent to the
browser, but with one caveat. In the browser, you have the benefit
of external CSS and Javascript files. In the HTML email, you have to
include all of that (as far as I know anyway…maybe there is a way
to do it).
Hope that helps a least a little.
Peace,
Phillip
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 08:42:09AM -0600, Phillip K. wrote:
or something to hit the server and save a “portable” version, but that
@invoice = Invoice.find(blah blah blah)
flash[:notice] = e.message
end
the “output” variable is passed to the UserMailer and get used as the
body of the message. It’s the same output that would get sent to the
browser, but with one caveat. In the browser, you have the benefit
of external CSS and Javascript files. In the HTML email, you have to
include all of that (as far as I know anyway…maybe there is a way
to do it).
Hope that helps a least a little.
Well, render_to_string is the obvious first step, but the problem is
those
assets (and links). I don’t think I mind the email loading the assets
from
the server (most email programs will require the user to accept loading
images/assets from an external site, but that’s fine), but I need a way
for
those URLs to be fully-qualified. The HTML BASE tag might do it, but I’m
not sure. Time to test some email programs (including, ugh, Outlook).
Peace,
Phillip
–Greg
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:07:09AM -0600, Phillip K. wrote:
Phillip
–Greg
Ah, I see your dilemma. One possibility, though I think it would be
a last resort, would be to write a helper to create an absolute URL
for all of the resource related helpers (link_to, image_tag, etc).
I’d like to think there is a simpler solution, though.
I guess another possibility is using Hpricot to run through and make all
the URLs absolute. Not marvelously efficient, but I don’t expect this to
be
a high-volume site. I just have to hit every element and make every src
and
href attribute absolute.
Peace,
Phillip
–Greg
On Jan 29, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Gregory S. wrote:
but I’m
not sure. Time to test some email programs (including, ugh, Outlook).
Peace,
Phillip
–Greg
Ah, I see your dilemma. One possibility, though I think it would be
a last resort, would be to write a helper to create an absolute URL
for all of the resource related helpers (link_to, image_tag, etc).
I’d like to think there is a simpler solution, though.
Peace,
Phillip