Using GMail to Send Email on Ruby on Rails 3.2

A few weeks ago I have posted a simple step-by-step tutorial about using the GMail server to send emails on Ruby on Rails 2.3. Now I'm going to show the same approach that is being used on the latest version of Rails as of this writing which is 3.2.X.

Objective

To use GMail or Google's server to enable email sending on your site even on development side. This method should also be applicable even on your development environment aka localhost.

Specification

• Rails 3.2.X (currently I'm on 3.2.6 as of this writing)
• Ruby 1.9.3
• Gem 1.8.24

Steps

1. First step is to open config/application.rb and add this inside your Application class. With this, we assume that you already have a valid Google email address.
   
   

   ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp
   ActionMailer::Base.perform_deliveries = true
   ActionMailer::Base.raise_delivery_errors = true
   
   
   ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
     :address              => "smtp.gmail.com",
     :port                 => 587,
     :domain               => "gmail.com",
     :user_name            => "[INSERT GMAIL USERNAME HERE]",
     :password             => "[INSERT PASSWORD HERE]",
     :authentication       => "plain",
     :enable_starttls_auto => true
   }
   
   config.action_mailer.default_url_options = {
     :host => "localhost:3000"
   }
   

   
   You may use google app to customize your google account with your own domain.
   
   
2. Now create a mailer:
   
   

   rails g mailer Notifier
   
   

   
   
3. Now open app/mailers/notifier.rb
   
   

   def sendmail(email_from, email_to, sender_name, subject, message)
    @message = message
       mail(:subject => "#{subject}", :from => "no-reply@isecure.com", :cc => email_to) do |format|
     format.html
    end
     end
   

   
   You may use a different parameter to pass.
   
   
4. Inside the folder app/views/notifier. Create sendmail.html.erb and copy the following:
   

   A message coming from <%= @sender_name + " (#{@sender})" %>
   <br />
   <br />
   <b>SUBJECT:</b> <%= @subject %><br/>
   <br />
   <b>MESSAGE:</b>
   <fieldset>
    <%= @message %>
   </fieldset>
   

   
   You can also customize it depending on the message you will sent over the email. Remember to use <br/> for new line since we are rendering an HTML here. (The code above doesn't seem to display this properly here)
   
   
5. That should do it. Now you can call this function to any part of your controllers or models to use it. Just follow this syntax:
   
   

   # note the deliver function added at the end
   # syntax is [MAILER CLASS].[function and parameter].deliver
   
   Notifier.sendmail("[FROM EMAIL]", "[TO EMAIL]", "[FROM NAME]", "[SUBJECT]", @message).deliver
   

   
   

And that should do the trick for this version of rails.