Email previews in Ruby on Rails - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Email previews in Rails

📖 Scenario: You are building a Rails application that sends welcome emails to new users. To check how these emails look before sending them, you want to create email previews.

🎯 Goal: Create an email preview class for the UserMailer that shows a sample welcome email for a user named Jane Doe with the email [e-mail].

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a sample User object with name Jane Doe and email [e-mail]

Create a preview class UserMailerPreview inside test/mailers/previews

Add a method welcome_email in the preview class that calls UserMailer#welcome_email with the sample user

Ensure the preview class inherits from ActionMailer::Preview

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Email previews help developers and designers see exactly how emails will look before sending them to real users. This avoids mistakes and improves email quality.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create and use email previews is important for Rails developers working on applications that send emails, ensuring better testing and user experience.

1

Create a sample user object

Create a variable called user that is a new User instance with name set to "Jane Doe" and email set to "[e-mail]".

Ruby on Rails

# Create a sample user object
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use User.new(name: "Jane Doe", email: "[e-mail]") to create the user.

2

Create the preview class

Create a class called UserMailerPreview inside the test/mailers/previews folder that inherits from ActionMailer::Preview.

Ruby on Rails

user = User.new(name: "Jane Doe", email: "[e-mail]")

# Create UserMailerPreview class inheriting from ActionMailer::Preview
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define UserMailerPreview as a class that inherits from ActionMailer::Preview.

3

Add the welcome_email method

Inside the UserMailerPreview class, add a method called welcome_email that returns UserMailer.welcome_email(user) using the user variable.

Ruby on Rails

user = User.new(name: "Jane Doe", email: "[e-mail]")

class UserMailerPreview < ActionMailer::Preview
  # Define welcome_email method
  # Your code here
end

Need a hint?

Define welcome_email method that calls UserMailer.welcome_email(user).

4

Complete the preview setup

Ensure the UserMailerPreview class and the user variable are correctly defined in the same file so Rails can use this preview to show the welcome email.

Ruby on Rails

user = User.new(name: "Jane Doe", email: "[e-mail]")

class UserMailerPreview < ActionMailer::Preview
  def welcome_email
    UserMailer.welcome_email(user)
  end
end

# Confirm the preview class and user variable are set up correctly
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Make sure the preview class and user variable are in the same file and properly defined.