NODEJS EMAIL SERVICE

Hey there, here are the steps required to use this package.

Getting Started

First off, let's start by installing the npm package by running

npm i nodejs-email-service

After installing the package, let's move on to initializing the package in our server root directory or desired file of your choice.

To initialize it, we write the following;

const nodejs_email_service = require('nodejs-email-service');

const email_service = new nodejs_email_service(config, properties)

Arguments Explained

CONFIG: The config object consists the parameters required to setup your mailing service. These parameters include;

service: This is the service you want to use. This could be gmail, mailgun e.t.c.

host: The host required by your mail service provider. Should be in your service provider instructions. E.g smtp.mailgun.org for mailgun e.t.c

user <required>: The user provided by your mail service provider.

pass <required>: The password provided by your mail service provider.

port: The host required by your mail service provider. Should be in your service provider instructions. E.g 587 for mailgun e.t.c

Note: Your user and pass should be private and therefore be set as an environment variable

PROPERTIES: The properties object consisits the parameters required to configure your custom templating system for the package to use. These parameters include;

extensionName: This is the extension name of your template file. E.g .handlebars or .hbs

partialsDir: This is the relative path to your partials directory.

layoutsDir: This is the relative path to your layouts directory.

viewPath: This is the relative path to your templates directory.

When used with the parameters, we have something like this:

const nodejs_email_service = require('nodejs-email-service');

const email_service = new nodejs_email_service(
    {
        host: 'smtp.mailgun.org',
        service: 'Mailgun',
        user: process.env.MAILGUN_USERNAME,
        pass: process.env.MAILGUN_PASSWORD
    },
    {
        partialsDir: './mock-templates-1/partials',
        layoutsDir: './mock-templates-1/layouts',
        viewPath: './mock-templates-1/templates',
        extensionName: '.handlebars'
    }
)

Note: To use the default template to check if it works, do not pass in the properties argument as it is optional.

SENDING EMAILS

To start sending emails, all you have to do is call our sendEmail function with the necessary parameters.

 email_service.sendEmail(parameters)

These parameters include;

to <required> : This is the recipient of the email. Pass in an array for multiple recipients.

sender: This is the sender of the email. This is a string and can be written how ever you want.

subject: This is the subject of the email.

template: This is the template which you want this service to use and is only required if you passed in layoutsDir and viewPath during initialization.

context: This is used to add dynamic data into your mail template. For Instance, if we want to greet our mail recipient or call them by their names, we could easily pass in their names to the sendEmail function. Let's see the context argument as a way to pass any meta data we want on to our recipient.

When use with it's parameters, we have;

email_service.sendMail({
        to: "[email protected]",
        sender: '[email protected]',
        subject: 'First Time User',
        template:  'dummy-2',
        context: {
            name: 'Name of recipient',
            gender: 'Male'
        }
     })

And that's it, that's all you need to start sending emails from your server. Thanks for using our package.

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