Node Email Templates

Node.js NPM package for rendering beautiful emails with your template engine and CSS pre-processor of choice coupled with email-friendly inline CSS using juice.

Enjoy this package? Check out eskimo and express-cdn, and follow @niftylettuce!

Index

• Email Templates
• Installation
• Quick Start
• EJS Custom Tags
• Examples
  • Basic
  • Nodemailer
  • Postmark
• Changelog
• Contributors
• License

Email Templates

For customizable, pre-built email templates, see Email Blueprints and Transactional Email Templates.

Supported Template Engines

• ejs
• jade
• swig
• handlebars
• emblem
• dust-linkedin

Supported CSS Pre-processors

• less
• sass
• stylus
• styl

Prerequisites

This module depends on jsdom which requires the ability to compile C++ on your localhost. Before installing, please verify that you have the prerequisites installed for your OS.

• OSX requirements
• Linux requirements

Important Note for Windows Users

Developing on OS X or Ubuntu/Linux is recommended, but if you only have access to a Windows machine you can do one of the following:

• Use vagrant to create a linux dev environment (recommended)
• Follow the Windows installation guide for contextify

Installation

npm install -S email-templates

Starting with version 1.1.1 you must install the engines you wish to use by adding them to your package.json dependencies.

npm install -S [ejs|jade|swig|handlebars|emblem|dust-linkedin]

Quick Start

1. Install the module for your respective project:

   npm install -S email-templates

2. Install the template engine you intend to use:

   • ejs@^1.0.0

   • jade@^1.3.1

   • swig@^1.3.2

   • handlebars@^1.3.0

   • emblem@~0.3.16

   • dust-linkedin@^2.4.0

   • less@^1.7.0

   • stylus@^^0.45.1

   • styl@^0.2.7

   • node-sass@^0.9.3

   npm install -S <engine>

3. Create a folder called templates inside your root directory (or elsewhere).

   mkdir templates

4. For each of your email templates (e.g. a welcome email to send to users when they register on your site), respectively name and create a folder inside the templates folder.

   mkdir templates/welcome-email

5. Add the following files inside the template's folder:

   • html.{{ext}} (required)
   • text.{{ext}} (optional)
   • style.{{ext}}(optional)

   See supported template engines for possible template engine extensions (e.g. .ejs, .jade, .swig) to use for the value of {{ext}} above.

   You may prefix any file name with anything you like to help you identify the files more easily in your IDE. The only requirement is that the filename contains html., text., and style. respectively.

6. You may use the include directive from ejs (for example, to include a common header or footer). See the /examples folder for details.

7. Utilize one of the examples below for your respective email module and start sending beautiful emails!

Template Engine Options

If your want to configure your template engine, just pass options.

Want to use different opening and closing tags instead of the EJS's default <% and %>?.

// ...
emailTemplates(templatesDir, { open: '{{', close: '}}' }, function(err, template) {
// ...

You can also pass other options from EJS's documentation.

Want to add a helper or partial to Handlebars?

// ...
emailTemplates(templatesDir, {
  helpers: {
    uppercase: function(context) {
      return context.toUpperCase()
    }
  }, partials: {
    // ...
  }
})
// ...

Examples

Basic

Render a template for a single email or render multiple (having only loaded the template once).

var path           = require('path')
  , templatesDir   = path.join(__dirname, 'templates')
  , emailTemplates = require('email-templates');

emailTemplates(templatesDir, function(err, template) {

  // Render a single email with one template
  var locals = { pasta: 'Spaghetti' };

  template('pasta-dinner', locals, function(err, html, text) {
    // ...
  });

  // Render multiple emails with one template
  var locals = [
    { pasta: 'Spaghetti' },
    { pasta: 'Rigatoni' }
  ];

  var Render = function(locals) {
    this.locals = locals;
    this.send = function(err, html, text) {
      // ...
    };
    this.batch = function(batch) {
      batch(this.locals, templatesDir, this.send);
    };
  };

  // An example users object
  var users = [
    {
      email: 'pappa.pizza@spaghetti.com',
      name: {
        first: 'Pappa',
        last: 'Pizza'
      }
    },
    {
      email: 'mister.geppetto@spaghetti.com',
      name: {
        first: 'Mister',
        last: 'Geppetto'
      }
    }
  ];

  template('pasta-dinner', true, function(err, batch) {
    for(var user in users) {
      var render = new Render(users[user]);
      render.batch(batch);
    }
  });

});

Nodemailer

var path           = require('path')
  , templatesDir   = path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'templates')
  , emailTemplates = require('email-templates')
  , nodemailer     = require('nodemailer');

emailTemplates(templatesDir, function(err, template) {

  if (err) {
    console.log(err);
  } else {

    // ## Send a single email

    // Prepare nodemailer transport object
    var transport = nodemailer.createTransport("SMTP", {
      service: "Gmail",
      auth: {
        user: "some-user@gmail.com",
        pass: "some-password"
      }
    });

    // An example users object with formatted email function
    var locals = {
      email: 'mamma.mia@spaghetti.com',
      name: {
        first: 'Mamma',
        last: 'Mia'
      }
    };

    // Send a single email
    template('newsletter', locals, function(err, html, text) {
      if (err) {
        console.log(err);
      } else {
        transport.sendMail({
          from: 'Spicy Meatball <spicy.meatball@spaghetti.com>',
          to: locals.email,
          subject: 'Mangia gli spaghetti con polpette!',
          html: html,
          // generateTextFromHTML: true,
          text: text
        }, function(err, responseStatus) {
          if (err) {
            console.log(err);
          } else {
            console.log(responseStatus.message);
          }
        });
      }
    });


    // ## Send a batch of emails and only load the template once

    // Prepare nodemailer transport object
    var transportBatch = nodemailer.createTransport("SMTP", {
      service: "Gmail",
      auth: {
        user: "some-user@gmail.com",
        pass: "some-password"
      }
    });

    // An example users object
    var users = [
      {
        email: 'pappa.pizza@spaghetti.com',
        name: {
          first: 'Pappa',
          last: 'Pizza'
        }
      },
      {
        email: 'mister.geppetto@spaghetti.com',
        name: {
          first: 'Mister',
          last: 'Geppetto'
        }
      }
    ];

    // Custom function for sending emails outside the loop
    //
    // NOTE:
    //  We need to patch postmark.js module to support the API call
    //  that will let us send a batch of up to 500 messages at once.
    //  (e.g. <https://github.com/diy/trebuchet/blob/master/lib/index.js#L160>)
    var Render = function(locals) {
      this.locals = locals;
      this.send = function(err, html, text) {
        if (err) {
          console.log(err);
        } else {
          transportBatch.sendMail({
            from: 'Spicy Meatball <spicy.meatball@spaghetti.com>',
            to: locals.email,
            subject: 'Mangia gli spaghetti con polpette!',
            html: html,
            // generateTextFromHTML: true,
            text: text
          }, function(err, responseStatus) {
            if (err) {
              console.log(err);
            } else {
              console.log(responseStatus.message);
            }
          });
        }
      };
      this.batch = function(batch) {
        batch(this.locals, templatesDir, this.send);
      };
    };

    // Load the template and send the emails
    template('newsletter', true, function(err, batch) {
      for(var user in users) {
        var render = new Render(users[user]);
        render.batch(batch);
      }
    });

  }
});

Postmark

This example utilizes Postmark.js.

Did you know nodemailer can also be used to send SMTP email through Postmark? See this section of their Readme for more info.

For more message format options, see this section of Postmark's developer documentation section.

var path           = require('path')
  , templatesDir   = path.resolve(__dirname, '..', 'templates')
  , emailTemplates = require('email-templates')
  , postmark       = require('postmark')('your-api-key');

emailTemplates(templatesDir, function(err, template) {

  if (err) {
    console.log(err);
  } else {

    // ## Send a single email

    // An example users object with formatted email function
    var locals = {
      email: 'mamma.mia@spaghetti.com',
      name: {
        first: 'Mamma',
        last: 'Mia'
      }
    };

    // Send a single email
    template('newsletter', locals, function(err, html, text) {
      if (err) {
        console.log(err);
      } else {
        postmark.send({
          From: 'Spicy Meatball <spicy.meatball@spaghetti.com>',
          To: locals.email,
          Subject: 'Mangia gli spaghetti con polpette!',
          HtmlBody: html,
          TextBody: text
        }, function(err, response) {
          if (err) {
            console.log(err.status);
            console.log(err.message);
          } else {
            console.log(response);
          }
        });
      }
    });


    // ## Send a batch of emails and only load the template once

    // An example users object
    var users = [
      {
        email: 'pappa.pizza@spaghetti.com',
        name: {
          first: 'Pappa',
          last: 'Pizza'
        }
      },
      {
        email: 'mister.geppetto@spaghetti.com',
        name: {
          first: 'Mister',
          last: 'Geppetto'
        }
      }
    ];

    // Custom function for sending emails outside the loop
    //
    // NOTE:
    //  We need to patch postmark.js module to support the API call
    //  that will let us send a batch of up to 500 messages at once.
    //  (e.g. <https://github.com/diy/trebuchet/blob/master/lib/index.js#L160>)
    var Render = function(locals) {
      this.locals = locals;
      this.send = function(err, html, text) {
        if (err) {
          console.log(err);
        } else {
          postmark.send({
            From: 'Spicy Meatball <spicy.meatball@spaghetti.com>',
            To: locals.email,
            Subject: 'Mangia gli spaghetti con polpette!',
            HtmlBody: html,
            TextBody: text
          }, function(err, response) {
            if (err) {
              console.log(err.status);
              console.log(err.message);
            } else {
              console.log(response);
            }
          });
        }
      };
      this.batch = function(batch) {
        batch(this.locals, templatesDir, this.send);
      };
    };

    // Load the template and send the emails
    template('newsletter', true, function(err, batch) {
      for(user in users) {
        var render = new Render(users[user]);
        render.batch(batch);
      }
    });

  }
});

Conventions

See nifty-conventions for code guidelines, general project requirements, and git workflow.

Contributors

• Nick Baugh niftylettuce@gmail.com
• Andrea Baccega vekexasia@gmail.com
• Nic Jansma http://nicj.net
• Jason Sims sims.jrobert@gmail.com
• Miguel Mota hello@miguelmota.com
• Jeduan Cornejo jeduan@gmail.com

Full list of contributors can be found on the GitHub Contributor Graph

License

MIT