Question

Using the Mail gem (i.e. Rails + ActionMailer), is there a clean way to get the display name of the recipient?

I can get the address with:

mail.to.first

And I can get the formatted display name + address with:

mail.header_fields.select{ |f| f.name == "To" }.first.to_s

But how can I get just the display name part (i.e. before the < and >). I know somebody is going to suggest a Regex, but that’s not what I’m looking for, since I’d then have to parse out any encoding, which is something the Mail gem probably already does. I’m the author of a popular Mailer library in PHP and am aware of the pitfalls of just assuming the bit before < and > is human-readable, in the headers, when 8-bit characters come into play.

I can do this:

mail.header_fields.select{ |f| f.name == "To" }.first.parse.individual_recipients.first.display_name.text_value

But there must be a better way? 🙂

Answer 1

Figured it out, sorry. For anyone else who hits this thread looking for the solution:

mail[:to].display_names.first