Voltron::Notify
Voltron Notify is an attempt to join Twilio's SMS api with Rails' default mailer functionality into one single method.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'voltron-notify'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install voltron-notify
Then run the following to create the voltron.rb initializer and add the notify config:
$ rails g voltron:notify:install
Usage
Once installed and configured, add notifyable at the top of any model you wish to be able to send notifications, such as:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
notifyable [args]
end
notifyable will create a notifications association on whatever model it is called on. The one optional argument should be a hash with default SMS/Email ActiveJob options. See "ActiveJob Integration" below for more info on how/when the default options will be used.
Defined default options should look like so:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
notifyable sms: { wait: 10.minutes, queue: 'sms' },
email: { wait_until: 10.minutes.from_now, queue: 'mailers' }
end
Once done, you can utilize Voltron Notify like so:
@user = User.find(1)
@user.notifications.create do |n|
# First argument is SMS message text, second argument is hash containing zero or more of: [:to, :from]
n.sms "This is my message", to: "1 (234) 567-8910"
# and/or ...
# First argument is email subject, remaining arguments can consist of [:to, :from] or any other param you'd like,
# they will all be converted to @variables for use in the mailer template
n.email "This is the mail subject", { to: "[email protected]", param_one: "Hi there", param_two: "" }
end
While you may specify the :to and :from as one of the arguments, by default the :from value of each notification type comes from Voltron.config.notify.email_from and Voltron.config.notify.sms_from. The value of :to by default will attempt to be retrieved by calling .phone or .email on the notifyable model itself. So given a User model with attributes (or methods) email and phone, the following will send notifications to those values:
@user = User.find(1) #<User id: 1, phone: "1234567890", email: "[email protected]", created_at: "2016-09-23 16:49:20", updated_at: "2016-09-23 16:49:20">
@user.notifications.create do |n|
n.sms "Hello from SMS" # Will send to +1 (123) 456-7890
n.email "Hello from Email" # Will send to [email protected]
end
# @user.notifications.build { |n| ... } ... followed by @user.save works the same way
Optionally, you may pass a block to the sms or email methods that allows for additional functionality, like including attachments or overriding the email method default mailer/method:
@user.notifications.create do |n|
n.sms "Hello from SMS" do
attach "picture.jpg" # Attach an image using the rails asset pipeline by specifying just the filename
attach "http://www.someimagesite.com/example/demo/image.png" # Or just provide a url to a supported file beginning with "http"
end
n.email "Hello from Email" do
attach "picture.jpg" # Uses the asset pipeline like above
attach "http://www.example.com/picture.jpg" # This WILL NOT work, email attachments don't work that way
mailer SiteMailer # Default: Voltron::NotificationMailer
method :send_my_special_notification # Default: :notify
arguments @any, list, of.arguments, :you, would, @like # In this case, the arguments used by SiteMailer.send_my_special_notification()
end
end
In the case of the methods mailer, method, arguments, and template, below is each's purpose and default values
| Method | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| mailer | Voltron::NotificationMailer | Defines what mailer class should be used to handle the sending of email notifications. Can be defined as the actual class name or a string, even in the format '<module>/<mailer>'. It is eventually converted to a string anyways, converted to a valid format with classify and then instantiated with constantize |
| method | :notify | Specifies what method within the defined mailer should be called. Can be a string or symbol |
| arguments | nil | Accepts an unlimited number of arguments that will be passed directly through to your mailer method Can be anything you want, so long as +mailer+.+method+() will understand it. |
| template | nil, but due to ActionMailer's default behavior, assuming +mailer+ and +method+ are not modified, it will look for app/views/voltron/notification_mailer/notify.<format>.erb |
Overrides the default mailer template by parsing a single string argument into separate template_path and template_name arguments for the +mail+ method. Note that this argument should be the path relative to your applications app/views directory, and that it strips any file extensions. So, in the case of a view located at app/views/my_mailer/sub_dir/special_template.html.erb you can specify the path my_mailer/sub_dir/special_template. Depending on what format email you've chosen to send it will look for special_template.<format>.erb |
Note that both SMS and Email notifications have validations on the :to/:from fields, the email subject, and the SMS body text. Since notifications is an association, any errors in the actual notification content will bubble up, possibly preventing the notifyable model from saving. For that reason, it may be more logical to instead use a @notifyable.notifications.build / @notifyable.save syntax to properly handle errors that may occur.
ActiveJob Integration
Voltron Notify supports sending both email (via deliver_later) and SMS (via Voltron::SmsJob and perform_later). To have all notifications be handled by ActiveJob in conjunction with Sidekiq/Resque/whatever you need only set the config value Voltron.config.notify.use_queue to true. If ActiveJob is configured properly notifications will send that way instead. You may also optionally set the delay for each notification by setting the value of Voltron.config.notify.delay to any time value (i.e. 5.minutes, 3.months, 0.seconds)
If the value of Voltron.config.notify.use_queue is true, additional methods for sending SMS/Email can be used to further control the ActiveJob params.
For the email method:
| Queue Specific Methods Available | Accepts Arguments? | Behavior | Default Behavior If Not Manually Called |
|---|---|---|---|
| deliver_now | No | Same as deliver_now, except this will not occur until the parent notification association is saved | Yes, if Voltron.config.notify.use_queue is not truthy. No otherwise |
| deliver_now! | No | Same as deliver_now!, except this will not occur until the parent notification association is saved | No |
| deliver_later | Yes, same as what deliver_later would accept. These arguments will come from the defaults specified when notifyable is called in the model. Default arguments are always overridden by the same options defined in this methods arguments. See documentation of notifyable and it's accepted arguments above. |
Same as deliver_later, except this will not occur until the parent notification association is saved | Yes, if Voltron.config.notify.use_queue is truthy. No otherwise |
| deliver_later! | Yes, same as what deliver_later! would accept. These arguments will come from the defaults specified when notifyable is called in the model. Default arguments are always overridden by the same options defined in this methods arguments. See documentation of notifyable and it's accepted arguments above. |
Same as deliver_later!, except this will not occur until the parent notification association is saved | No |
For the sms method:
| Queue Specific Methods Available | Accepts Arguments? | Behavior | Default Behavior If Not Manually Called |
|---|---|---|---|
| deliver_now | No | When associated notification object is saved, SMS will be sent immediately (via ActiveJob's perform_now), in a blocking way, aka - rails will wait until SMS is sent before continuing execution. | Yes, if Voltron.config.notify.use_queue is not truthy. No otherwise |
| deliver_later | Yes, same as what set would accept. These arguments will come from the defaults specified when notifyable is called in the model. Default arguments are always overridden by the same options defined in this methods arguments. See documentation of notifyable and it's accepted arguments above. |
When associated notification object is saved, ActiveJob's perform_later is called. | Yes, if Voltron.config.notify.use_queue is truthy. No otherwise |
Example usage:
@user = User.find(1)
@user.notifications.build do |n|
n.sms("Immediate Message").deliver_now # Will deliver the SMS as soon as the notification is saved
n.sms("Delayed Message").deliver_later(queue: 'sms', wait_until: 10.minutes.from_now) # Will deliver the SMS via +perform_now+ with ActiveJob
n.email("Delayed Mail Subject", { param_one: "Hi there", param_two: "" }).deliver_later(wait: 5.minutes)
end
@user.save # Will finally perform the actual actions defined. Basically, +deliver_*+ does nothing until the notification is saved.
Updating SMS Notifications
Also supported are Twilio status update callbacks for SMS notifications. To enable, you can add the following to your routes.rb file
Rails.application.routes.draw do
allow_notification_update(={})
end
Without specifying, the default options for notification updates are as follows:
| Option | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| path | /notification/update | The default url path that Twilio will POST updates to. Can be anything you want so long as it's a valid URL path |
| controller | voltron/notification | The controller that will handle the notification update (in this case app/controllers/voltron/notification_controller.rb) |
| action | update | The controller action (method) that will perform the update |
If the value of controller or action are modified, it is assumed that whatever they point to will handle SMS notification updates. See the description column for "StatusCallback" parameter here for information on what Twilio will POST to the callback url. Or, take a look at this gems app/controller/voltron/notification_controller.rb file to see what it does by default.
In order for allow_notification_update to generate the correct callback url, please ensure the value of Voltron.config.base_url is a valid host name. By default it will attempt to obtain this information from the :host parameter of Rails.application.config.action_controller.default_url_options but if specified in the Voltron initializer that will
Note that allow_notification_update does nothing if running on a host matching /localhost|127\.0\.0\.1/i Since Twilio can't reach locally running apps to POST to, the app will not even provide Twilio with the callback url to try it. If you have a local app host named Twilio will try and POST to it, but will obviously fail for the reasons previously stated. Basically, this feature only works on remotely accessible hosts.
Development
After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ehainer/voltron-notify. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.