Cakephp send email in different user selected language

Question

I want to sent email on a specific language regarding of the web language.

For example when the user register he has the possibility to select a language for example English - en, Italian - it, German - de and french - fr.

The website is multilingual, so what i wanna do is that when a user fills a form for example the contact form, and after he submits the form an e-mail is sent to him.

So lets assume that he has selected Italian as language of the website, but when he was registered he had selected English. So the E-mail should be sent on English even though the site is in Italian.

Emails are translated through __() function of cakephp using .pot files.

Email Template is this:

contact_us_user

<h2 style="color: #ee2424;">
    <?php 
        echo __('SITENAME');
    ?>
</h2>
<?php
    echo "<h2 style='text-align: left;'>";
    if (isset($firstname) && isset($lastname) && isset($title)) {
        echo __('Hello <span style="color: #ee2424;"> %s %s</span>.', $firstname, $lastname);
    } else {
        echo __('Hello');
    }
    echo "</h2>";
    echo __('Thank you for contacting us!');
    echo "<br />";
    echo __('We will take a look to your <strong>reservation enquiry</strong> and we will get back to you with a booking quote');
    echo "<br />";
    echo "<hr />";
    echo __('<p>Thanks and Regards.</p>');
?>

And the function that send the e-mail is this:

/*  SEND MESSAGE TO THE USER    */
            $layout = 'default';
            $template = 'contact_us_user';
            $subject  = __('TEST');
            $title_for_layout = __('Contact US');
            $viewVars = array(
                "firstname"  => $this->request->data['Contact']['name'],
                "lastname"  => $this->request->data['Contact']['surname'],
            );
            if(isset($this->request->data['Contact']['email']) && !empty($this->request->data['Contact']['email']) && trim($this->request->data['Contact']['email'])!='') {
                $this->__sendEmail($this->request->data['Contact']['email'], $subject, $template, $viewVars, $layout, $title_for_layout);
            }

And the method is as bellow:

/**
 * send E-mail method
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
public function __sendEmail($emailTo, $subject = 'Email', $template = 'default', $viewVars, $layout = 'default', $title_for_layout = 'test') {
    $this->set('title_for_layout', $title_for_layout);
    App::uses('CakeEmail', 'Network/Email');
    $Email = new CakeEmail();
    $Email->template($template, $layout)
            ->emailFormat('html')
            ->viewVars($viewVars) 
            ->from(array('[email protected]'=>'sitename.com'))
            ->to($emailTo)
            ->subject($subject);
    return $Email->send();
}

So what I am asking is that is there a way or parameter to pass to email to indicate in which language I want email to be sent. Something like: $language = 'en';

My Cakephp version is: 2.5.6

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I modified a bit of @drmonkeyninja code. This way im also telling the site to store the value on session to access the correct locale:

public function __sendEmailWithLanguage($emailTo, $viewVars, $lang, $subject = 'Email', $template = 'default', $layout = 'default') {
    // Store site language
    $siteLanguage = Configure::read('Config.language');

    if (isset($lang) && !empty($lang) && trim($lang)!='') {
        // Switch to preferred email language
        $this->Session->write('Config.language', $lang);
        Configure::write('Config.language', $lang);
    }

    // Send email
    App::uses('CakeEmail', 'Network/Email');
    $Email = new CakeEmail();
    $Email->template($template, $layout)
        ->emailFormat('html')
        ->viewVars($viewVars) 
        ->from(array('[email protected]'=>'Biriola.com'))
        ->to($emailTo)
        ->subject($subject);
    $result = $Email->send();

    // Restore to site language
    $this->Session->write('Config.language', $siteLanguage);
    Configure::write('Config.language', $siteLanguage);

    return $result;
}

So this way you change even the session value of language and the you change them back again to previows value.

Hope this helps!.

Answer 2

You could perhaps try switching the configured language at the time of sending the email and then restore the site language after sending the email:-

public function __sendEmail($emailTo, $subject = 'Email', $template = 'default', $viewVars, $layout = 'default', $title_for_layout = 'test', $lang = 'eng') {
    $this->set('title_for_layout', $title_for_layout);
    App::uses('CakeEmail', 'Network/Email');
    $Email = new CakeEmail();
    // Store site language
    $siteLanguage = Configure::read('Config.language');
    // Switch to preferred email language
    Configure::write('Config.language', $lang);
    // Send email
    $Email->template($template, $layout)
            ->emailFormat('html')
            ->viewVars($viewVars) 
            ->from(array('[email protected]'=>'sitename.com'))
            ->to($emailTo)
            ->subject($subject);
    $result = $Email->send();
    // Restore to site language
    Configure::write('Config.language', $siteLanguage);
    return $result;
}

Not sure why you're setting the title_for_layout here. Apart from the fact that title_for_layout was deprecated in CakePHP 2.5 it would be better if this method was defined in a model; even better would be to have the email called as an Event.