Boulder Ruby: Attraction Mailbox - Why I Love Action Mailbox

Early version of my talk Attraction Mailbox that was presented at Boulder Ruby and Philly.rb

Transcript

1. Cody Norman Attraction Mailbox Why I Love Action Mailbox ❤ Boulder Ruby ❄ March 13th 2024
2. I really ❤ email
3. I’m in love with the idea of email I really ❤ email
4. Reason #1 Your users are probably using their email exponentially more than your app.
5. Introduction What we’ll be covering • What is Action Mailbox? • How to get started. • Sending inbound emails to your application. • How inbound emails are processed. • Deploying and running on production.
6. Action Mailbox Background What is it? Action Mailbox routes incoming emails to controller-like mailboxes for processing in Rails. The inbound emails are turned into `InboundEmail` records using Active Record and feature life cycle tracking These inbound emails are routed asynchronously using Active Job to one or several dedicated mailboxes, which are capable of interacting directly with the rest of your domain model.
10. https://actionmailbox:PASSWORD@example.com/rails/action_mailbox/postmark/inbound_emails
14. Reason #2 Getting started is easy
15. Getting Started • Run generators to install • ApplicationMailbox routes the email to speci fi c mailbox • Routing inbound emails • Sending inbound emails to your development environment
16. Running the Generator Run built in generator $ bin/rails action_mailbox:install $ bin/rails db:migrate
17. Getting Started What’s added bin/rails action_mailbox:install Copying application_mailbox.rb to app/mailboxes create app/mailboxes/application_mailbox.rb rails railties:install:migrations FROM=active_storage,action_mailbox Copied migration 20240123213529_create_action_mailbox_tables.action_mailbox.rb from action_mailbox
18. Getting Started Generated Migrations # This migration comes from action_mailbox (originally 20180917164000) class CreateActionMailboxTables < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.0] def change create_table :action_mailbox_inbound_emails do |t| t.integer :status, default: 0, null: false t.string :message_id, null: false t.string :message_checksum, null: false t.timestamps t.index [ :message_id, :message_checksum ], name: "index_action_mailbox_inbound_emails_uniqueness", unique: true end end end
19. Getting Started ApplicationMailbox # app/mailboxes/application_mailbox.rb class ApplicationMailbox < ActionMailbox::Base # routing /something/i => :somewhere end
20. Getting Started Email Routing Tips # app/mailboxes/application_mailbox.rb class ApplicationMailbox < ActionMailbox::Base routing all: :support # routing(/support\./i => :support) end
21. Getting Started Generating your fi rst Mailbox bin/rails generate mailbox support class SupportMailbox < ApplicationMailbox def process # email processing logic end end
23. Rails Conductor Sending Inbound Emails Two options for sending inbound email: • By form • Send Email by Raw Source
24. Reason #3 Source Code is approachable and intuitive.
25. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail What get’s created class InboundEmail < Record self.table_name = "action_mailbox_inbound_emails" include Incineratable, MessageId, Routable has_one_attached :raw_email, service: ActionMailbox.storage_service enum status: %i[ pending processing delivered failed bounced ] def mail @mail ||= Mail.from_source(source) end def source @source ||= raw_email.download end def processed? delivered? || failed? || bounced? end end end
26. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail What get’s created include Incineratable, MessageId, Routable
27. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail What get’s created has_one_attached :raw_email, service: ActionMailbox.storage_service
28. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail What get’s created enum status: %i[ pending processing delivered failed bounced ] def mail @mail ||= Mail.from_source(source) end def source @source ||= raw_email.download end def processed? delivered? || failed? || bounced? end
29. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail inbound_email.raw_email => #<ActiveStorage::Attached::One:0x0000000112e396e0 @name="raw_email", @record=#<ActionMailbox::InboundEmail:0x0000000110523968> inbound_email.source => "Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:56:41..." inbound_email.mail.class => Mail::Message inbound_email.mail => #<Mail::Message:41200>
30. ActionMailbox::InboundEmail What Get’s Created Ruby Mail Object mail = Mail.new do from 'mikel@test.lindsaar.net' to 'you@test.lindsaar.net' subject 'This is a test email' body File.read('body.txt') end mail.to_s #=> "From: mikel@test.lindsaar.net\r\nTo: you@…
31. Reason #4 Processing an email is ‘easy'
32. Mailboxes Processing email messages • Where the magic happens 🪄 • process method • before_processing method and bounce_with • Ruby Mail object • Parsing Attachments
33. Mailboxes Processing Emails There are also some lifecycle_hooks around the process method before_processing, after_processing, around_processing
34. Mailboxes Processing Emails # Enqueues the given +message+ for delivery and changes the inbound email's status to +:bounced+. def bounce_with(message) inbound_email.bounced! message.deliver_later end # Immediately sends the given +message+ and changes the inbound email's status to +:bounced+. def bounce_now_with(message) inbound_email.bounced! message.deliver_now end
35. class SupportMailbox < ApplicationMailbox before_processing :ensure_user ... def ensure_user @user = User.find_by(email: from_email) unless @user bounce_with Mailer.post_not_found(mail) end end end
36. Mailboxes Process Method class LegacyDocumentMailbox < ApplicationMailbox def process create_legacy_document end def create_legacy_document legacy_document = LegacyDocument.new( name: mail.subject, email: mail.from.first, ) # imported_document is the attachment name on LegacyDocument legacy_document.imported_document.attach( io: StringIO.new(mail.attachments.first.body.decoded), filename: mail.attachments.first.filename ) legacy_document.save! end end
37. Reason #5 Deploying to production is simple
38. Deploying to Production Potential Pitfalls • Default URL isn’t going to be set by default (that happens in the Application Controller). You have to set this the same way you set it for your emails. • You probably want to set up an ActiveStorage service besides ‘disk’. That can cause some issues • Routing all your inbound email through a subdomain can save a lot of headaches.
39. Default Ingress Options • Exim • Mailgun • Mandrill • Post fi x • Postmark (we’ll cover this one) • Qmail • SendGrid
40. Deploying Con fi gure Ingress # config/environments/production.rb config.action_mailbox.ingress = :postmark # generate secure password for webhook URL SecureRandom.alphanumeric => "12312ddfgdfg"
42. https://actionmailbox:PASSWORD@example.com/rails/action_mailbox/postmark/inbound_emails
43. Deploying Checking the Webhook URL
44. Deploying Update DNS records
45. I hope you hate email less and love Action mailbox a little more. THANK YOU!!!
46. Cody Norman Independent Ruby on Rails Consultant codynorman.com @cnorm35