Question

For my Rails app, we developed an half home-brewed email system. We created a model called Email which then gets added to a queue to be sent (using a web service).

To create templates, we’ve been just mashing strings together in the model, ie:

Email < ActiveRecord::Base

   def self.stock_message(recipient)
     email = Email.create do |e|
       e.recipient = recipient
       e.message = String.new
       e.message << "first line <br />"
       e.message << "second line <br />"
     end 
   end

end

#to send:
e = Email.stock_message "[e-mail]"

This clearly violates MVC and really becomes a problem when I want to format strings using helper methods. How can I properly separate the view code from the model?

Answer 1

I think you can use render_to_string method, but as it is not availble in model, you need to call it from controller:

# model
Email < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.stock_message(recipient, message)
    email = Email.create do |e|
      e.recipient = recipient
      e.message = message
    end 
  end
end

# controller
e = Email.stock_message "[e-mail]", render_to_string "email/my_email"

If you need to pass some variables to render method, then just add :locals => {:var1 => value, :var2 => value2}.

# view
first line <br />
second line <br />

In this example you should store views for emails in app/views/emails/ directory.

However, as @David said, why not use mailer provided by Rails? It would be better solution.