SES Templated Emails Helper Constructs for AWS CDK

Why

• AWS SES Templates are amazing but pain to setup and manage

Features

• Custom resource to create SES Email Templates (functionality missing in AWS UX and CloudFormation)
• Custom resource to add SNS destination to message delivery events
• SNS topic and optional email subscription to notify you of template render fails!
• Lambda with an SQS queue to send emails without going over your SES limits
• Easy to drop-in to your project and use right away
• Perfect for transactional and drip emails
• 0 idle costs. 100% serverless

SES Features

• You can create up to 10,000 email templates per Amazon SES account.
• Each template can be up to 500KB in size, including both the text and HTML parts.

Pre-requisites

• FromEmail needs to be verified in AWS SES aws ses verify-email-identity --email-address [email protected]
• Apply for a sending limit increase (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/request-production-access.html) to be able to send to non-verified email addresses
• If you include RenderFailuresNotificationsEmail you will receive an "AWS Notification - Subscription Confirmation" email.
• npm install cdk-ses-template-mailer

Use

import { SESEmailTemplate, SESTemplateMailer } from 'cdk-ses-template-mailer';

// Read from files
new SESEmailTemplate(this, 'Email1', {
    TemplateName: 'mytemplate',
    TextPart: fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/../ses-templates/mytemplate/template.txt', 'utf8'),
    HtmlPart: fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/../ses-templates/mytemplate/template.html', 'utf8'),
    SubjectPart: 'Email Subject Goes Here'
});

// Or embed
new SESEmailTemplate(this, 'EventLiveEmail', {
    TemplateName: 'eventLive',
    TextPart: 'Hi {{guest.name}}, {{data.event_title}} is Live!',
    HtmlPart: '<strong>Hi {{guest.name}}</strong><br />{{data.event_title}} is Live!',
    SubjectPart: '{{data.event_title}} is Live!'
});

// ... define more templates....

const mailer = new SESTemplateMailer(this, 'Mailer', {
    FromEmail: '[email protected]',
    FromName: 'My Service',
    RenderFailuresNotificationsEmail: '[email protected]' // optional. add your email to receive render failure notifications
});

new cdk.CfnOutput(this, 'SQSQueueURL', {
    value: mailer.queue.queueUrl
})

new cdk.CfnOutput(this, 'SNSRenderFailureTopicArn', {
    value: mailer.snsRenderFailuresTopic.topicArn
})

Adding SNS subscriptions to other email event types

import { SESSNSDestination } from 'cdk-ses-template-mailer';

const newTopic = new sns.Topic(this, 'CustomEmailEventsTopic', {
    topicName: 'sesSendConfigRenderFailures'
});

new sns.Subscription(this, 'CustomEmailEventsTopicSubscription', {
    topic: newTopic,
    protocol: sns.SubscriptionProtocol.EMAIL,
    endpoint: '[email protected]'
})

new SESSNSDestination(this, 'CustomEmailEventsTopicSNSDestination', {
    ConfigurationSetName: 'SendConfig', // Keep it
    EventDestinationName: 'CustomEventsSNSDestination',
    MatchingEventTypes: [
        'send' | 'reject' | 'bounce' | 'complaint' | 'delivery' | 'open' | 'click' | 'renderingFailure'
    ],
    TopicARN: newTopic.topicArn
})

SQS Message format

export interface SESTemplateMailerEventBody {
    to: {
        name?: string,
        email: string
    },
    data: any,
    template: string // name of template
}

Test

aws sqs send-message --queue-url=QUEUE_URL_FROM_OUTPUTS --message-body='{ "data": {}, "template": "mytemplate", "to": { "email": "[email protected]", "name": "Name" }}'

TODO

• Explore SendBulkTemplatedEmail (send email to up to 50 destinations in each call)
• Add automated email tracking and stats collection?
• Export Message Type
• Tests

Useful commands

• npm run build compile typescript to js
• npm run watch watch for changes and compile

License

MIT