Are there any MVC Email Packages That Don't Require a HTTP Context?

Question

We send emails from our ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor Web Application.

Currently we're using ActionMailer.NET.

I've looked at MvcMailer.

The problem with both is that they need a Http Context to execute.

The problem with this is that i want to send emails asychronously. Now i know you can asynchronously do the actual send (e.g the SMTP call), but i want the entire process of sending an email to be asynchronous, e.g:

public ActionResult DoSomething(Something something)
{
   _db.Save(something);

   Task.Factory.StartNew(() => {
      new MailController().DoSomething().Send(something);
   });

   return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

In the "DoSomething" method, i query the database again, do other stuff, etc....i want all this to be asynchronous - hence the entire call is wrapped in a task, a opposed to just doing .SendAsync(). Hope that makes sense.

The above example is ActionMailer, and it breaks - because the HTTP context is gone in the spawned thread.

Does anyone know how i can get this to work, or alternatively another package which does not rely on the existence of a HTTP context?

I'm not sure why a HTTP context is required - there is no request routing here, simply parsing a view which is on the file system into HTML.

Answer 1

You may checkout postal which uses the RazorViewEngine:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
        {
            Thread.Sleep(5000);
            dynamic email = new Email("Example");
            email.To = "[email protected]";
            email.FunnyLink = "some funny link";
            email.Send();
        });

        return View();
    }
}

and inside ~/Views/Emails/Example.cshtml:

To: @ViewBag.To
From: [email protected]
Subject: Important Message

Hello,
You wanted important web links right?
Check out this: @ViewBag.FunnyLink

Also make sure you have read and understood the dangers of implementing background tasks in ASP.NET applications before putting your application on production.