Remove Sprockets dependency

[barrywoolgar]

Hello @markets, this is the long overdue PR in response to #46 - sorry for the delay.

This resolves the basic problem of a Rails app not being able to boot after adding the gem to the project if Sprockets is not enabled. The README has been updated to describe the problem and provide instructions for a workaround.

Now in the case of Sprockets being disabled:

• An error message is displayed to the user when the installer is run, providing a link to more information
• The installer supports a --skip-sprockets to bypass this error, so they can implement the workaround for CSS styles
• The images (logo, globe, paperclip) are replaced with unicode alternatives

The use of emoji might offend, especially with regard to the logo, so I'm very open to suggestions here. Perhaps they should be inlined using Base64 data URLs instead?

Thanks

[barrywoolgar]

Here's a partial screenshot of the image replacements:

[markets]

Hi @barrywoolgar no worries! thanks a lot for working on this 👍🏼

The use of emoji might offend, especially with regard to the logo, so I'm very open to suggestions here. Perhaps they should be inlined using Base64 data URLs instead?

Yeah, maybe that's a good solution, so it will work for both scenarios with no extra logic.

[barrywoolgar]

No problem, I only thought of the Base64 idea when I was writing the PR, otherwise I would have done it that way to start with!

[barrywoolgar]

OK, I've switched to Base64 encoded data URIs and that's appears to be working well.

I've also added a method to the installer that will automatically copy Maily's application.html.erb file into the right place in the user's app. This removes an unnecessary manual step from the workaround - now they just need to edit it and replace the stylesheet_link_tag with their preferred method for replacing the styles. The README has been updated accordingly.

[barrywoolgar]

This leaves only the use of SCSS relying on Sprockets. It's tempting to try and resolve that in this PR too, but perhaps that should be a separate undertaking?

(Edited to remove some too-early-in-the-morning lack of thinking)

[markets]

hi @barrywoolgar 👋🏼

This leaves only the use of SCSS relying on Sprockets. It's tempting to try and resolve that in this PR too

That would be amazing, I think it makes sense to do it here in the same PR, so we can ship a new version compatible with both engines, with no extra steps or workarounds 👌🏼

We can just use the simple approach we took with the js: move to plain css <style>, in a partial https://github.com/markets/maily/blob/master/app/views/maily/shared/_javascript.html.erb. We can use css variables for current sass vars.

This will close #47 and also will allow us to remove this "hack" 👇🏼 too (as we wont need this dep anymore 🎉 )

maily/maily.gemspec

Lines 18 to 22 in 6d1caef

	if RUBY_VERSION >= "2.5.0"
	s.add_dependency "sassc-rails"
	else
	s.add_dependency "sass-rails", ">= 4", "< 6"
	end

After this change, it would be a good time to cut a v1.0 :)

[barrywoolgar]

OK, that negates quite a few of the changes I originally made but that can only be a good thing!

I have elected to use ERB variables instead of CSS variables as a final mercy to IE users.

I have also removed the functionally-orphaned SCSS file completely as that will likely only cause confusion at a later date. It's easy enough for gem developers to convert back and forth if and when necessary. In future a proper pipeline can be established once we know what that should look like...

[markets]

Thank you so much @barrywoolgar! I just made a first quick review and everything seems fine ✅ to me. I'll make a second pass this weekend and merge it!

[markets]

merged 🚀 @barrywoolgar less deps, less lines, simpler approach, more "compatible" 👌🏼 nice pull request! I'll make some tweaks and prepare new release. Thanks!

[markets]

@barrywoolgar v1.0.0 pushed 🚀 to RubyGems:

• https://rubygems.org/gems/maily/versions/1.0.0
• https://github.com/markets/maily/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#100

Thanks a lot for working on this and making Maily simpler 👏🏼

[barrywoolgar]

Hurray! No problem at all, thanks for your patience while I took the long way round :)

Congrats on v1... now, what's for v2?

[markets]

👍🏼 👍🏼

My vague thoughts for v2 😄 :

• Multiple hooks ("versions") per mail (=> Allow to add multiple hooks/versions per mail #9)
• Customize emails arguments from UI (=> Call emails with different arguments via UI #6)
• Remove Rails 4 support, remove EOL Rubies
• ... more ideas?

[barrywoolgar]

Those all sound very good!

I've got a patch that applies Premailer if it's available, so the email markup is closer to what is sent when using it (ie. lots of inline styles), and another that handles namespaced mailers a bit better when listing them in the sidebar.

I need to catch up on some things in Real Life first though, but I'll generate some PRs when I get a bit of free time :)

All the best!