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Deprecated as of June 6, 2024

Griddler has been deprecated in favor of ActionMailbox since this is built into Rails now.

Griddler

Receive emails in your Rails app

Griddler is a Rails engine that provides an endpoint for services that convert incoming emails to HTTP POST requests. It parses these POSTs and hands off a built email object to a class implemented by you.

Tutorials

• SendGrid wrote a great tutorial on integrating Griddler with your application.
• We have our own blog post on the subject over at Giant Robots.

Installation

1. Add griddler and an adapter gem to your application's Gemfile and run bundle install.

2. A route is needed for the endpoint which receives POST messages. To add the route, in config/routes.rb you may either use the provided routing method mount_griddler or set the route explicitly. Examples:

   # config/routes.rb
   
   # mount using default path: /email_processor
   mount_griddler
   
   # mount using a custom path
   mount_griddler('/email/incoming')
   
   # the DIY approach:
   post '/email_processor' => 'griddler/emails#create'
   

Configuration Options

An initializer can be created to control some of the options in Griddler. Defaults are shown below with sample overrides following. In config/initializers/griddler.rb:

Griddler.configure do |config|
  config.processor_class = EmailProcessor # CommentViaEmail
  config.email_class = Griddler::Email # MyEmail
  config.processor_method = :process # :create_comment (A method on CommentViaEmail)
  config.reply_delimiter = '-- REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE --'
  config.email_service = :sendgrid # :cloudmailin, :postmark, :mandrill, :mailgun
end

By default Griddler will look for a class named EmailProcessor. The class is initialized with a Griddler::Email instance representing the incoming email, and has a process method to actually process the email. For example, in ./lib/email_processor.rb:

class EmailProcessor
  def initialize(email)
    @email = email
  end

  def process
    # all of your application-specific code here - creating models,
    # processing reports, etc

    # here's an example of model creation
    user = User.find_by_email(@email.from[:email])
    user.posts.create!(
      subject: @email.subject,
      body: @email.body
    )
  end
end

Griddler::Email attributes

Email Addresses

Gridder::Email provides email addresses as hashes. Each hash will have the following information of each recipient:

Testing In Your App

You may want to create a factory for when testing the integration of Griddler into your application. If you're using factory_girl this can be accomplished with the following sample factory:

factory :email, class: OpenStruct do
  # Assumes Griddler.configure.to is :hash (default)
  to { [{ full: 'to_user@email.com', email: 'to_user@email.com', token: 'to_user', host: 'email.com', name: nil }] }
  from { { token: 'from_user', host: 'email.com', email: 'from_email@email.com', full: 'From User <from_user@email.com>', name: 'From User' } }
  subject { 'email subject' }
  body { 'Hello!' }
  attachments { '0' }

  trait :with_attachment do
    attachments {[
      ActionDispatch::Http::UploadedFile.new({
        filename: 'img.png',
        type: 'image/png',
        tempfile: File.new("#{File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))}/fixtures/img.png")
      })
    ]}
  end
end

Bear in mind, if you plan on using the :with_attachment trait, that this example assumes your factories are in spec/factories.rb and you have an image file in spec/fixtures/.

To use it in your tests, build with email = build(:email) or email = build(:email, :with_attachment).

Adapters

Depending on the service you want to use Griddler with, you'll need to add an adapter gem in addition to griddler.

Writing an Adapter

Griddler can theoretically work with any email => POST service. In order to work correctly, adapters need to have their POST parameters restructured.

Griddler::Email expects certain parameters to be in place for proper parsing to occur. When writing an adapter, ensure that the normalized_params method of your adapter returns a hash with these keys:

All keys are required unless otherwise stated.

Adapters should be provided as gems. If you write an adapter, let us know and we will add it to this README. See griddler-sendgrid for an example implementation.

Credits

Griddler was written by Caleb Hearth and Joel Oliveira.

Thanks to our contributors!

About thoughtbot

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