Sending a notification email using handlebars templates

[Kat Bella]

Hello :)

I am running keystonejs and using the handlebars templating engine. I would like to integrate Mandrill to send out notification emails when someone sends an enquiry but the following happens:
- The post is successful and recorded 

- I can view the enquiry in the admin ui

- The Mandrill API log does NOT show an API call failing or being successful

- No email is sent

I have in my keystone.js file the following in the init call:

// some options above
'custom engine': handlebars.create({
 layoutsDir: 'templates/views/layouts',
 partialsDir: 'templates/views/partials',
 defaultLayout: 'default',
 helpers: new require('./templates/views/helpers')(),
 extname: '.hbs'
 }).engine,
 
 'auto update': true,
 'emails': 'templates/emails',
 'mandrill api key': 'my api key',
    'mandrill username': 'my username',
// some options below

and in my Enquiry.js file I have the following:

Enquiry.schema.methods.sendNotificationEmail = function(callback) {
 
 if ('function' !== typeof callback) {
 callback = function() {};
 }
 
 var enquiry = this;


 
 keystone.list('User').model.find().where('isAdmin', true).exec(function(err, admins) {
 
 if (err) return callback(err);
 
 new keystone.Email('enquiry-notification').send({
 to: admins,
 from: {
 name: 'Kat Bella',
 email: 'm...@email.com'
 },
 subject: 'New Inquiry for Kat Bella',
 enquiry: enquiry
 }, callback);


 });
};

At Jed Watson's suggestion, I swapped out the above send method for the following:

 new keystone.Email('enquiry-notification').send({
    subject: 'New Inquiry for Kat Bella',
    to: 'me@email.com',
    fromName: 'Kat Bella',
    fromEmail: 'm...@email.com',
        enquiry: enquiry
 }, callback);

Still no luck.  I would appreciate any input on what I am doing wrong. Thanks!

[atlb...@gmail.com]

What version of Keystone are you using? Have you tried using the callback to print any errors to the console?

[Kat Bella]

I used the version that the yeoman generator had about a week ago, so possibly 0.2.16 or 0.2.15.

I have not tried using the callback to print errors yet - I will try that next and report my findings. 

(currently not looking at code so will get back to this tonight)

[Kat Bella]

alright so the error I'm getting is - 

{ [Error: ENOENT, open '/......../katbella.com/templates/emails/enquiry-notification/email.jade']
  errno: 34,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  path: '/............./katbella.com/templates/emails/enquiry-notification/email.jade' }

At a high level glance it appears to be looking for the jade extension still. But shouldn't the handlebars handling code take care of this? Or is this not helpful?

[Kat Bella]

Apologies in advance - still new to keystone. :)

[Kat Bella]

Another update (sorry, posting as I go along)

Went into the email.js class and required in handlebars and changed the extension and template type from jade (default) to handlebars. Seems that the yeoman generator didn't do this automatically when I selected the templating engine?

Got it to send notification emails - sending two though - need to verify this is because it's set to send to admins and I think I have two with the same contact email.

[Kat Bella]

That was exactly it - had two admin users with the same email.

Seems good now! Would appreciate clarification regarding the keystone yeoman generator not changing the Email class to take the templating engine option into account.

[Tom Hartnell]

Hi Bella,

I've been trying to do the same so glad to hear you got it working. 

From a cursory glance at the Email class it seems you can pass the template engine config in the options when creating an email

which should avoid the need to modify the Keystone internals. 

[Kat Bella]

Hi Tom,

Interesting. Do you have a snippet of code you can show that shows this working? It would be great to not have to alter the internals. :)

[James Lukensow]

This is what I ended up doing, which is using swig for the email template:

    keystone.Email.defaults.templateExt = 'swig';

    keystone.Email.defaults.templateEngine = require('swig');

    new keystone.Email('forgotten-password').send({

      user: user,

      link: '/reset-password/' + user.resetPasswordKey,

      subject: 'Reset your account',

      to: user.email,

      from: {

        name: 'From Name',

        email: 'nor...@something.com'

      }

    }, callback);

[Kat Bella]

Great! Thanks for that - I will remove my internal changes and do that instead. Thanks for the help. :)

[Tom Hartnell]

That's great thanks James.

I've been passing it in the options when creating the email (below) but 

changing the defaults globally as you have is probably neater.

  var enquiry = this,
      options = {
        templateExt: 'hbs',
        templateEngine: require('handlebars'),
        templateName: 'enquiry-notification'
      },
      email = new keystone.Email(options);