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I have an asp.net web application, which sends several emails to users during the signup procedure. Right now I have them inline with the code, but I would like to hold them in a central location where I can edit them without going in to VS.
What would be the best place/format to store these HTML templates?
490
I store all my e-mail templates for my web-app as ASP.NET MVC Razor Views, but as embedded resource in a light assembly that I can easily reference from any project.
A template looks like this (notice the localization):
@model Milkshake.Commerce.Model.Users.UserDto
@using Milkshake.Core.Internationalization;
@using Milkshake.Commerce.Model.Meta;
@if (Language.CurrentForInterface.TwoLetterISOLanguageName.Equals("da"))
{
<h1>Hej @Model.FirstName</h1>
<p>
Din nye brugerkonto til Milkshake Commerce er blevet oprettet.
</p>
<p>
Gå til dine <a href="http://@ShopSettings.Instance.Domain.TrimEnd('/')/Account">konto indstillinger</a>, brug din e-mail adresse som adgangskode og du vil blive videreført til dine konto indstillinger, hvor du kan ændre din adgangskode.
</p>
<p>Ha' en god dag!</p>
<h2>The Milkshake Commerce Team!</h2>
}
else
{
<h1>Hi @Model.FirstName</h1>
<p>
Your new user account for Milkshake Commerce has been created for you.
</p>
<p>
Go to your <a href="http://@ShopSettings.Instance.Domain.TrimEnd('/')/Account">user account page</a>, use your e-mail address as password and you'll be taken directly to your account page where you can change your password.
</p>
<p>Have a nice day!</p>
<h2>The Milkshake Commerce Team!</h2>
}
Then I have a "master" template, called _AppEmailTemplate.cshtml:
@using Milkshake.Commerce.Model.Resources
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
body
{
font-family: Arial, Helvetica;
}
.layout-wrapper
{
width: 600px;
}
.header
{
background-color: #242225;
}
.header img
{
display: block;
}
.content
{
background-color: #ffffff; padding: 10px 20px; border: 10px solid #eaeaea; border-top: none;
}
.footer
{
padding: 20px; padding-top: 5px; font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;
}
p
{
font-size: 14px;
}
p.company-details
{
font-size: 12px;
}
h1
{
font-size: 20px;
}
h2
{
font-size: 16px;
}
</style>
<style type="text/css" id="mobile">
@@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
body
{
}
.layout-wrapper
{
width: 480px !important;
}
.header
{
background-color: transparent !important;
}
.header img
{
width: 480px !important;
}
.content
{
border: none !important;
}
.footer
{
padding-top: 15px !important;
}
p
{
font-size: 22px !important;
}
h1
{
font-size: 28px !important;
}
h2
{
font-size: 24px !important;
}
}
</style>
</head>
<body leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0" offset="0" bgcolor="#f1f1f1">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#f1f1f1">
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="center">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" height="80">
<tr>
<td class="header" align="center">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" height="80" class="layout-wrapper" style="width: 600px;">
<tr>
<td>
<img src="http://example.com/email-header.png" alt="Milkshake Commerce" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600" class="layout-wrapper">
<tr>
<td class="content" align="left">
#¤#¤CONTENTSECTION#¤#¤
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="footer" align="left">
<p>@Text.appEmailDisclaimer</p>
<p>@Text.appEmailFooterAd.UrlDecode()</p>
<p class="company-details"><i>Company name etc.</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
To actually send the e-mail, I use RazorEngine for rendering:
public void SendSystemEmail<T>(string templateName, string subject, string fromName, string recipientEmail, T model)
{
dynamic template = this.GetEmailTemplate(templateName);
string layoutBody = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(template.Layout as string, model);
string emailBody = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(template.Template as string, model);
emailBody = layoutBody.Replace(CONTENTSECTIONREPLACETOKEN, emailBody);
PreMailer.Net.PreMailer pm = new PreMailer.Net.PreMailer();
emailBody = pm.MoveCssInline(emailBody, true);
EmailDto email = new EmailDto();
email.Body = emailBody;
email.IsBodyHtml = true;
email.FromEmail = "[email protected]";
email.ReplyToEmail = email.FromEmail;
email.FromName = fromName;
email.RecipientEmail = recipientEmail;
email.Subject = subject;
email.Type = EmailTypes.Transactional;
if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(email.FromName))
{
email.FromName = "Milkshake Software";
}
this.SendMailMessages(new List<EmailDto>() { email }, false);
}
The above code uses my own EmailDto object. Here you can easily create a [MailMessage][2] instance directly, and send it using the [SmtpClient][3].
Also, to get the best rendering in all e-mail clients, I use my own PreMailer.Net library to move all CSS inline. Read my blog post here, for more information. (Code is on Github)
The GetEmailTemplate does this:
/// <summary>
/// Gets the email template.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="templateName">Name of the template.</param>
/// <returns>Returns the e-mail template.</returns>
private dynamic GetEmailTemplate(string templateName)
{
string masterTemplateContents = this.GetTemplateFileContents("_AppEmailTemplate.cshtml");
string templateContents = this.GetTemplateFileContents(templateName + ".html.cshtml");
return new { Layout = masterTemplateContents, Template = templateContents };
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets the template file contents.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="templateFileName">The name of the template file.</param>
/// <returns>Returns the contents of the template file.</returns>
private string GetTemplateFileContents(string templateFileName)
{
return this.GetEmailFileContents("Templates", templateFileName);
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets the email file contents.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="lastNamespaceToken">The last namespace token.</param>
/// <param name="templateFileName">The name of the template file.</param>
/// <returns>
/// Returns the contents of the template file.
/// </returns>
private string GetEmailFileContents(string lastNamespaceToken, string templateFileName)
{
var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
if (assembly != null)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(String.Format("MyApp.BusinessLogic.Communication.{0}.{1}", lastNamespaceToken, templateFileName))))
{
while (!sr.EndOfStream)
{
var line = sr.ReadLine();
if (!line.StartsWith("@model"))
{
sb.AppendLine(line);
}
}
}
return sb.ToString();
}
return null;
}
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