I have a class that uses the razor engine to generate html templates and there seems to be an issue where some links (anchors or images) have an additional period inserted into the address, usually at the www. part making the link unusable.
There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason as to when or where it does this, sometimes it works fine, other times several of the links have this issue.
So when I return the template as string to then send as an email I call replace like below:
var fixedTemplate = template.Replace("www..", "www.");
But this isn't working. I've never ran into this issue before. The strings are quite large, could this cause problems with the replace function?
How can I
a) Fix the razor engine so that these random periods are no longer added in links
Or
b) Find out why the replace function isn't replacing all of the occurrences.
A sample of the code called in my class below for completeness.
// nt = class associated with template
using (TemplateService templateService = new TemplateService())
{
string html = templateService.Parse(File.ReadAllText(nt.TemplateFilePath), nt, null, null);
var pm = new PreMailer.Net.PreMailer(html);
//inline css styles with premailer
Emailer.SendTestEmail(pm.MoveCssInline().Html, emailAddress, "Test Email: " + campaign.Title);
pm = null;
}
And the emailer code where replace is called
public static void SendTestEmail(string template, string emailAddress, string subject)
{
var updatedTemplate = template.Replace("www..", "www.");
var email = new MailMessage
{
Body = updatedTemplate,
Subject = subject,
IsBodyHtml = true,
From = new MailAddress("noreply#mydomain.com")
};
email.To.Add(emailAddress);
using (var smtpClient = new SmtpClient())
{
smtpClient.PickupDirectoryLocation = "M:\\Pickup";
smtpClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory;
smtpClient.Send(email);
}
}
Related
I am having the hardest time figuring out how to create a pdf and attach it to an automated email. I thought it wouldn't be that hard but have quickly found out that it is much more complex than I imagined. Anyways, what I am doing is I have an order form, and when the customer fills out an order and submits it, I want it to generate a PDF for that order and attach it to an automated confirmation email. I am currently using Rotativa to generate the pdf and if I just ran the action result for generating it, it works perfectly fine which looks something like this:
public ActionResult ProcessOrder(int? id)
{
string orderNum = "FulfillmentOrder" + orderDetail.OrderID + ".pdf";
var pdf = new ActionAsPdf("OrderReportPDF", new { id = orderDetail.OrderID }) { FileName = orderNum };
return pdf;
}
When I added the function to send an automated email after the order form was submitted, that works perfectly fine with just the email by itself. But I can't seem to figure out how to generate the pdf and attach it to the email. The report view that gets the data from the order form is called "OrderReportPDF". My order form is called "Checkout", but the action result I use for this is called "Process Order". I've taken out the code in this function that is for the order form as it is not applicable. The section of my code for sending the email after the form is submitted is:
public ActionResult ProcessOrder(int? id)
{
//Send a confirmation email
var msgTitle = "Order Confirmation #" + orderDetail.OrderID;
var recipient = JohnDoe;
var fileAttach = //This is where I can't figure out how to attach//
var fileList = new string[] { fileAttach };
var errorMessage = "";
var OrderConfirmation = "Your order has been placed and is pending review." +
" Attached is a copy of your order.";
try
{
// Initialize WebMail helper
WebMail.SmtpServer = "abc.net";
WebMail.SmtpPort = 555;
WebMail.UserName = recipient;
WebMail.Password = "12345";
WebMail.From = "orders#samplecode.com";
// Send email
WebMail.Send(to: "orders#samplecode.com",
subject: msgTitle,
body: OrderConfirmation,
filesToAttach: fileList
);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
errorMessage = ex.Message;
}
//5. Remove item cart session
Session.Remove(strCart);
return View("OrderSuccess");
}
I have been able to find very few articles on this issue using Rotativa and the ones I have found don't work for what I'm doing. Maybe Rotativa won't work for this, I'm hoping it does because I've designed my pdf report it generates from it, and not sure if doing it another way will screw up my formatting of it or not. As you can see at the bottom of the code, I return the view to an "OrderSuccess" page. When I try to implement the first code into the second code, it won't let me "return pdf" to execute the ActionAsPdf that generates the pdf when I do the "return View("OrderSuccess")". It only lets me do one or the other. If anybody knows how I can accomplish this, I need some help. I appreciate any suggestions or feedback. I'm pretty new to this so please be patient with me if I don't understand something.
Here is the updated code that fixed my problem and created the pdf, then attached it to an automated email once the order form was submitted:
public ActionResult ProcessOrder(int? id)
{
//1. Generate pdf file of order placed
string orderNum = "FulfillmentOrder" + orderDetail.OrderID + ".pdf";
var actionResult = new Rotativa.ActionAsPdf("OrderReportPDF", new { id = orderDetail.OrderID }) { FileName = orderNum };
var PdfAsBytes = actionResult.BuildFile(this.ControllerContext);
//2. Send confirmation email
var msgTitle = "Order Confirmation #" + orderDetail.OrderID;
var OrderConfirmation = "Your order has been placed and is pending review.<br />" +
" Attached is a copy of your order." +
using (MailMessage mail = new MailMessage())
{
mail.From = new MailAddress("orders#samplecode.com");
mail.To.Add("orders#samplecode.com");
mail.Subject = msgTitle;
mail.Body = OrderConfirmation;
mail.IsBodyHtml = true;
//STREAM THE CONVERTED BYTES AS ATTACHMENT HERE
mail.Attachments.Add(new Attachment(new MemoryStream(PdfAsBytes), orderNum));
using (SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient("abc.net", 555))
{
smtp.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("orders#samplecode.com", "password!");
smtp.EnableSsl = true;
smtp.Send(mail);
}
}
//3. Remove item cart session
Session.Remove(strCart);
return View("OrderSuccess");
}
Thank you again to the people that helped and got me pointed in the right direction! Also, a quick shout out to #Drewskis who posted this answer in convert Rotativa.ViewAsPdf to System.Mail.Attachment where I was able to use it to solve my issue!
Using MvcMailer, the problem is that our emails are being sent without our CSS as inline style attributes.
PreMailer.Net is a C# Library that can read in an HTML source string, and return a resultant HTML string with CSS in-lined.
How do we use them together? Using the scaffolding example in the MvcMailer step-by-step guide, we start out with this example method in our UserMailer Mailer class:
public virtual MvcMailMessage Welcome()
{
return Populate(x => {
x.ViewName = "Welcome";
x.To.Add("some-email#example.com");
x.Subject = "Welcome";
});
}
Simply install PreMailer.Net via NugGet
Update the Mailer class:
public virtual MvcMailMessage Welcome()
{
var message = Populate(x => {
x.ViewName = "Welcome";
x.To.Add("some-email#example.com");
x.Subject = "Welcome";
});
message.Body = PreMailer.Net.PreMailer.MoveCssInline(message.Body).Html;
return message;
}
Done!
If you have a text body with HTML as an alternate view (which I recommend) you'll need to do the following:
var message = Populate(m =>
{
m.Subject = subject;
m.ViewName = viewName;
m.To.Add(model.CustomerEmail);
m.From = new System.Net.Mail.MailAddress(model.FromEmail);
});
// get the BODY so we can process it
var body = EmailBody(message.ViewName);
var processedBody = PreMailer.Net.PreMailer.MoveCssInline(body, true).Html;
// start again with alternate view
message.AlternateViews.Clear();
// add BODY as alternate view
var htmlView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(processedBody, new ContentType("text/html"));
message.AlternateViews.Add(htmlView);
// add linked resources to the HTML view
PopulateLinkedResources(htmlView, message.LinkedResources);
Note: Even if you think you don't care about text it can help with spam filters.
I recommend reading the source for MailerBase to get a better idea what's going on cos all these Populate methods get confusing.
Note: This may not run as-is but you get the idea. I have code (not shown) that parses for any img tags and adds as auto attachments.
Important part is to clear the HTML alternate view. You must have a .text.cshtml file for the text view.
If you're using ActionMailer.Net(.Next), you can do this:
protected override void OnMailSending(MailSendingContext context)
{
if (context.Mail.IsBodyHtml)
{
var inlineResult = PreMailer.Net.PreMailer.MoveCssInline(context.Mail.Body);
context.Mail.Body = inlineResult.Html;
}
for (var i = 0; i < context.Mail.AlternateViews.Count; i++)
{
var alternateView = context.Mail.AlternateViews[i];
if (alternateView.ContentType.MediaType != AngleSharp.Network.MimeTypeNames.Html) continue;
using (alternateView) // make sure it is disposed
{
string content;
using (var reader = new StreamReader(alternateView.ContentStream))
{
content = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
var inlineResult = PreMailer.Net.PreMailer.MoveCssInline(content);
context.Mail.AlternateViews[i] = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(inlineResult.Html, alternateView.ContentType);
}
}
base.OnMailSending(context);
}
If you don't like using AngleSharp.Network.MimeTypeNames, you can just use "text/html". AngleSharp comes as a dependency of ActionMailer.Net.
Is there a better way to generate HTML email in C# (for sending via System.Net.Mail), than using a Stringbuilder to do the following:
string userName = "John Doe";
StringBuilder mailBody = new StringBuilder();
mailBody.AppendFormat("<h1>Heading Here</h1>");
mailBody.AppendFormat("Dear {0}," userName);
mailBody.AppendFormat("<br />");
mailBody.AppendFormat("<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>");
and so on, and so forth?
You can use the MailDefinition class.
This is how you use it:
MailDefinition md = new MailDefinition();
md.From = "test#domain.example";
md.IsBodyHtml = true;
md.Subject = "Test of MailDefinition";
ListDictionary replacements = new ListDictionary();
replacements.Add("{name}", "Martin");
replacements.Add("{country}", "Denmark");
string body = "<div>Hello {name} You're from {country}.</div>";
MailMessage msg = md.CreateMailMessage("you#anywhere.example", replacements, body, new System.Web.UI.Control());
Also, I've written a blog post on how to generate HTML e-mail body in C# using templates using the MailDefinition class.
Use the System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter class.
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
HtmlTextWriter html = new HtmlTextWriter(writer);
html.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.H1);
html.WriteEncodedText("Heading Here");
html.RenderEndTag();
html.WriteEncodedText(String.Format("Dear {0}", userName));
html.WriteBreak();
html.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.P);
html.WriteEncodedText("First part of the email body goes here");
html.RenderEndTag();
html.Flush();
string htmlString = writer.ToString();
For extensive HTML that includes the creation of style attributes HtmlTextWriter is probably the best way to go. However it can be a bit clunky to use and some developers like the markup itself to be easily read but perversly HtmlTextWriter's choices with regard indentation is a bit wierd.
In this example you can also use XmlTextWriter quite effectively:-
writer = new StringWriter();
XmlTextWriter xml = new XmlTextWriter(writer);
xml.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
xml.WriteElementString("h1", "Heading Here");
xml.WriteString(String.Format("Dear {0}", userName));
xml.WriteStartElement("br");
xml.WriteEndElement();
xml.WriteElementString("p", "First part of the email body goes here");
xml.Flush();
Updated Answer:
The documentation for SmtpClient, the class used in this answer, now reads, 'Obsolete("SmtpClient and its network of types are poorly designed, we strongly recommend you use https://github.com/jstedfast/MailKit and https://github.com/jstedfast/MimeKit instead")'.
Source: https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/04/MailKit-MimeKit-Official
Original Answer:
Using the MailDefinition class is the wrong approach. Yes, it's handy, but it's also primitive and depends on web UI controls--that doesn't make sense for something that is typically a server-side task.
The approach presented below is based on MSDN documentation and Qureshi's post on CodeProject.com.
NOTE: This example extracts the HTML file, images, and attachments from embedded resources, but using other alternatives to get streams for these elements are fine, e.g. hard-coded strings, local files, and so on.
Stream htmlStream = null;
Stream imageStream = null;
Stream fileStream = null;
try
{
// Create the message.
var from = new MailAddress(FROM_EMAIL, FROM_NAME);
var to = new MailAddress(TO_EMAIL, TO_NAME);
var msg = new MailMessage(from, to);
msg.Subject = SUBJECT;
msg.SubjectEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
// Get the HTML from an embedded resource.
var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
htmlStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(HTML_RESOURCE_PATH);
// Perform replacements on the HTML file (if you're using it as a template).
var reader = new StreamReader(htmlStream);
var body = reader
.ReadToEnd()
.Replace("%TEMPLATE_TOKEN1%", TOKEN1_VALUE)
.Replace("%TEMPLATE_TOKEN2%", TOKEN2_VALUE); // and so on...
// Create an alternate view and add it to the email.
var altView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(body, null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);
msg.AlternateViews.Add(altView);
// Get the image from an embedded resource. The <img> tag in the HTML is:
// <img src="pid:IMAGE.PNG">
imageStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(IMAGE_RESOURCE_PATH);
var linkedImage = new LinkedResource(imageStream, "image/png");
linkedImage.ContentId = "IMAGE.PNG";
altView.LinkedResources.Add(linkedImage);
// Get the attachment from an embedded resource.
fileStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(FILE_RESOURCE_PATH);
var file = new Attachment(fileStream, MediaTypeNames.Application.Pdf);
file.Name = "FILE.PDF";
msg.Attachments.Add(file);
// Send the email
var client = new SmtpClient(...);
client.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(...);
client.Send(msg);
}
finally
{
if (fileStream != null) fileStream.Dispose();
if (imageStream != null) imageStream.Dispose();
if (htmlStream != null) htmlStream.Dispose();
}
I use dotLiquid for exactly this task.
It takes a template, and fills special identifiers with the content of an anonymous object.
//define template
String templateSource = "<h1>{{Heading}}</h1>Dear {{UserName}},<br/><p>First part of the email body goes here");
Template bodyTemplate = Template.Parse(templateSource); // Parses and compiles the template source
//Create DTO for the renderer
var bodyDto = new {
Heading = "Heading Here",
UserName = userName
};
String bodyText = bodyTemplate.Render(Hash.FromAnonymousObject(bodyDto));
It also works with collections, see some online examples.
I would recomend using templates of some sort. There are various different ways to approach this but essentially hold a template of the Email some where (on disk, in a database etc) and simply insert the key data (IE: Recipients name etc) into the template.
This is far more flexible because it means you can alter the template as required without having to alter your code. In my experience your likely to get requests for changes to the templates from end users. If you want to go the whole hog you could include a template editor.
As an alternative to MailDefinition, have a look at RazorEngine https://github.com/Antaris/RazorEngine.
This looks like a better solution.
Attributted to...
how to send email wth email template c#
E.g
using RazorEngine;
using RazorEngine.Templating;
using System;
namespace RazorEngineTest
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string template =
#"<h1>Heading Here</h1>
Dear #Model.UserName,
<br />
<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>";
const string templateKey = "tpl";
// Better to compile once
Engine.Razor.AddTemplate(templateKey, template);
Engine.Razor.Compile(templateKey);
// Run is quicker than compile and run
string output = Engine.Razor.Run(
templateKey,
model: new
{
UserName = "Fred"
});
Console.WriteLine(output);
}
}
}
Which outputs...
<h1>Heading Here</h1>
Dear Fred,
<br />
<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>
Heading Here Dear Fred, First part of the email
body goes here
Emitting handbuilt html like this is probably the best way so long as the markup isn't too complicated. The stringbuilder only starts to pay you back in terms of efficiency after about three concatenations, so for really simple stuff string + string will do.
Other than that you can start to use the html controls (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls) and render them, that way you can sometimes inherit them and make your own clasess for complex conditional layout.
If you don't want a dependency on the full .NET Framework, there's also a library that makes your code look like:
string userName = "John Doe";
var mailBody = new HTML {
new H(1) {
"Heading Here"
},
new P {
string.Format("Dear {0},", userName),
new Br()
},
new P {
"First part of the email body goes here"
}
};
string htmlString = mailBody.Render();
It's open source, you can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/htmlplusplus/
Disclaimer: I'm the author of this library, it was written to solve the same issue exactly - send an HTML email from an application.
You might want to have a look at some of the template frameworks that are available at the moment. Some of them are spin offs as a result of MVC but that isn't required. Spark is a good one.
A commercial version which I use in production and allows for easy maintenance is LimiLabs Template Engine, been using it for 3+ years and allows me to make changes to the text template without having to update code (disclaimers, links etc..) - it could be as simple as
Contact templateData = ...;
string html = Template
.FromFile("template.txt")
.DataFrom(templateData )
.Render();
Worth taking a look at, like I did; after attempting various answers mentioned here.
I have a ready generated MHTML as a byte array (from Aspose.Words) and would like to send it as an email. I'm trying to do this through CDOSYS, though am open to other suggestions. For now though I have the following:
CDO.Message oMsg = new CDO.Message();
CDO.IConfiguration iConfg = oMsg.Configuration;
Fields oFields = iConfg.Fields;
// Set configuration.
Field oField = oFields["http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing"];
oField.Value = CDO.CdoSendUsing.cdoSendUsingPort;
oField = oFields["http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver"];
oField.Value = SmtpClient.Host;
oField = oFields["http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport"];
oField.Value = SmtpClient.Port;
oFields.Update();
//oMsg.CreateMHTMLBody("http://www.microsoft.com", CDO.CdoMHTMLFlags.cdoSuppressNone, "", "");
// NEED MAGIC HERE :)
oMsg.Subject = warning.Subject; // string
oMsg.From = "system#example.com";
oMsg.To = warning.EmailAddress;
oMsg.Send();
In this snippet, the warning variable has a Body property which is a byte[]. Where it says "NEED MAGIC HERE" in the code above I want to use this byte[] to set the body of the CDO Message.
I have tried the following, which unsurprisingly doesn't work:
oMsg.HTMLBody = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(warning.Body);
Anybody have any ideas how I can achieve what I want with CDOSYS or something else?
Please don't use CDO, it dates from an era when computers still used smoke signals to exchange emails. System.Net.Mail contains everything you need, MailMessage is your friend. Note its IsBodyHtml property.
It is possible via CDO.Message (it is necessary add to project references COM library "Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Library"):
protected bool SendEmail(string emailFrom, string emailTo, string subject, string MHTmessage)
{
string smtpAddress = "smtp.email.com";
try
{
CDO.Message oMessage = new CDO.Message();
// set message
ADODB.Stream oStream = new ADODB.Stream();
oStream.Charset = "ascii";
oStream.Open();
oStream.WriteText(MHTmessage);
oMessage.DataSource.OpenObject(oStream, "_Stream");
// set configuration
ADODB.Fields oFields = oMessage.Configuration.Fields;
oFields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing").Value = CDO.CdoSendUsing.cdoSendUsingPort;
oFields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver").Value = smtpAddress;
oFields.Update();
// set other values
oMessage.MimeFormatted = true;
oMessage.Subject = subject;
oMessage.Sender = emailFrom;
oMessage.To = emailTo;
oMessage.Send();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// something wrong
}
}
Is there a better way to generate HTML email in C# (for sending via System.Net.Mail), than using a Stringbuilder to do the following:
string userName = "John Doe";
StringBuilder mailBody = new StringBuilder();
mailBody.AppendFormat("<h1>Heading Here</h1>");
mailBody.AppendFormat("Dear {0}," userName);
mailBody.AppendFormat("<br />");
mailBody.AppendFormat("<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>");
and so on, and so forth?
You can use the MailDefinition class.
This is how you use it:
MailDefinition md = new MailDefinition();
md.From = "test#domain.example";
md.IsBodyHtml = true;
md.Subject = "Test of MailDefinition";
ListDictionary replacements = new ListDictionary();
replacements.Add("{name}", "Martin");
replacements.Add("{country}", "Denmark");
string body = "<div>Hello {name} You're from {country}.</div>";
MailMessage msg = md.CreateMailMessage("you#anywhere.example", replacements, body, new System.Web.UI.Control());
Also, I've written a blog post on how to generate HTML e-mail body in C# using templates using the MailDefinition class.
Use the System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter class.
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
HtmlTextWriter html = new HtmlTextWriter(writer);
html.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.H1);
html.WriteEncodedText("Heading Here");
html.RenderEndTag();
html.WriteEncodedText(String.Format("Dear {0}", userName));
html.WriteBreak();
html.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.P);
html.WriteEncodedText("First part of the email body goes here");
html.RenderEndTag();
html.Flush();
string htmlString = writer.ToString();
For extensive HTML that includes the creation of style attributes HtmlTextWriter is probably the best way to go. However it can be a bit clunky to use and some developers like the markup itself to be easily read but perversly HtmlTextWriter's choices with regard indentation is a bit wierd.
In this example you can also use XmlTextWriter quite effectively:-
writer = new StringWriter();
XmlTextWriter xml = new XmlTextWriter(writer);
xml.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
xml.WriteElementString("h1", "Heading Here");
xml.WriteString(String.Format("Dear {0}", userName));
xml.WriteStartElement("br");
xml.WriteEndElement();
xml.WriteElementString("p", "First part of the email body goes here");
xml.Flush();
Updated Answer:
The documentation for SmtpClient, the class used in this answer, now reads, 'Obsolete("SmtpClient and its network of types are poorly designed, we strongly recommend you use https://github.com/jstedfast/MailKit and https://github.com/jstedfast/MimeKit instead")'.
Source: https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/04/MailKit-MimeKit-Official
Original Answer:
Using the MailDefinition class is the wrong approach. Yes, it's handy, but it's also primitive and depends on web UI controls--that doesn't make sense for something that is typically a server-side task.
The approach presented below is based on MSDN documentation and Qureshi's post on CodeProject.com.
NOTE: This example extracts the HTML file, images, and attachments from embedded resources, but using other alternatives to get streams for these elements are fine, e.g. hard-coded strings, local files, and so on.
Stream htmlStream = null;
Stream imageStream = null;
Stream fileStream = null;
try
{
// Create the message.
var from = new MailAddress(FROM_EMAIL, FROM_NAME);
var to = new MailAddress(TO_EMAIL, TO_NAME);
var msg = new MailMessage(from, to);
msg.Subject = SUBJECT;
msg.SubjectEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
// Get the HTML from an embedded resource.
var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
htmlStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(HTML_RESOURCE_PATH);
// Perform replacements on the HTML file (if you're using it as a template).
var reader = new StreamReader(htmlStream);
var body = reader
.ReadToEnd()
.Replace("%TEMPLATE_TOKEN1%", TOKEN1_VALUE)
.Replace("%TEMPLATE_TOKEN2%", TOKEN2_VALUE); // and so on...
// Create an alternate view and add it to the email.
var altView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(body, null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);
msg.AlternateViews.Add(altView);
// Get the image from an embedded resource. The <img> tag in the HTML is:
// <img src="pid:IMAGE.PNG">
imageStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(IMAGE_RESOURCE_PATH);
var linkedImage = new LinkedResource(imageStream, "image/png");
linkedImage.ContentId = "IMAGE.PNG";
altView.LinkedResources.Add(linkedImage);
// Get the attachment from an embedded resource.
fileStream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(FILE_RESOURCE_PATH);
var file = new Attachment(fileStream, MediaTypeNames.Application.Pdf);
file.Name = "FILE.PDF";
msg.Attachments.Add(file);
// Send the email
var client = new SmtpClient(...);
client.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(...);
client.Send(msg);
}
finally
{
if (fileStream != null) fileStream.Dispose();
if (imageStream != null) imageStream.Dispose();
if (htmlStream != null) htmlStream.Dispose();
}
I use dotLiquid for exactly this task.
It takes a template, and fills special identifiers with the content of an anonymous object.
//define template
String templateSource = "<h1>{{Heading}}</h1>Dear {{UserName}},<br/><p>First part of the email body goes here");
Template bodyTemplate = Template.Parse(templateSource); // Parses and compiles the template source
//Create DTO for the renderer
var bodyDto = new {
Heading = "Heading Here",
UserName = userName
};
String bodyText = bodyTemplate.Render(Hash.FromAnonymousObject(bodyDto));
It also works with collections, see some online examples.
I would recomend using templates of some sort. There are various different ways to approach this but essentially hold a template of the Email some where (on disk, in a database etc) and simply insert the key data (IE: Recipients name etc) into the template.
This is far more flexible because it means you can alter the template as required without having to alter your code. In my experience your likely to get requests for changes to the templates from end users. If you want to go the whole hog you could include a template editor.
As an alternative to MailDefinition, have a look at RazorEngine https://github.com/Antaris/RazorEngine.
This looks like a better solution.
Attributted to...
how to send email wth email template c#
E.g
using RazorEngine;
using RazorEngine.Templating;
using System;
namespace RazorEngineTest
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string template =
#"<h1>Heading Here</h1>
Dear #Model.UserName,
<br />
<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>";
const string templateKey = "tpl";
// Better to compile once
Engine.Razor.AddTemplate(templateKey, template);
Engine.Razor.Compile(templateKey);
// Run is quicker than compile and run
string output = Engine.Razor.Run(
templateKey,
model: new
{
UserName = "Fred"
});
Console.WriteLine(output);
}
}
}
Which outputs...
<h1>Heading Here</h1>
Dear Fred,
<br />
<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>
Heading Here Dear Fred, First part of the email
body goes here
Emitting handbuilt html like this is probably the best way so long as the markup isn't too complicated. The stringbuilder only starts to pay you back in terms of efficiency after about three concatenations, so for really simple stuff string + string will do.
Other than that you can start to use the html controls (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls) and render them, that way you can sometimes inherit them and make your own clasess for complex conditional layout.
If you don't want a dependency on the full .NET Framework, there's also a library that makes your code look like:
string userName = "John Doe";
var mailBody = new HTML {
new H(1) {
"Heading Here"
},
new P {
string.Format("Dear {0},", userName),
new Br()
},
new P {
"First part of the email body goes here"
}
};
string htmlString = mailBody.Render();
It's open source, you can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/htmlplusplus/
Disclaimer: I'm the author of this library, it was written to solve the same issue exactly - send an HTML email from an application.
You might want to have a look at some of the template frameworks that are available at the moment. Some of them are spin offs as a result of MVC but that isn't required. Spark is a good one.
A commercial version which I use in production and allows for easy maintenance is LimiLabs Template Engine, been using it for 3+ years and allows me to make changes to the text template without having to update code (disclaimers, links etc..) - it could be as simple as
Contact templateData = ...;
string html = Template
.FromFile("template.txt")
.DataFrom(templateData )
.Render();
Worth taking a look at, like I did; after attempting various answers mentioned here.