A Rails engine to log email deliveries, visualize them in the Browser and, if you want, intercept them.
This gem allows you to log on the database the emails sent by your application.
It provides an interface to visualize the emails directly in the Browser, and search them.
You can of course navigate and search your emails using ActiveRecord LetterThief::EmailMessage model and integrate it
other parts of your app.
List of interecepted email
Email preview
You can also use Letter Thief as a delivery method in your application as well.
Set config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :letter_thief to stop sending emails and have them only logged in your
database. That's particularly useful in development environments or staging/pre-production environments as well.
If you used letter_opener in the past you know how nice it is to have
the sent emails opened automatically in your Browser when working locally.
LetterThief supports this as well with the very same mechanism, but launchy is not a direct dependency.
If you add Launchy on your Gemfile, emails will be opened right away once sent.
Since emails are persisted on the Database it means you can use this also on Heroku, deplo.io, or other PaaS where you don't have a disk. No need for an external service like Mailtrap (amazing service!) anymore.
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem "letter_thief"And then execute:
bundle install
bin/rails generate letter_thief:install
bin/rails db:migrateThis will create the necessary tables.
Mount the engine in your routes, protecting it. The code below might be different depending on how you authenticate your users.
authenticate :user, ->(user) { user&.administrator? } do
mount LetterThief::Engine => "/letter_thief"
endIf you want to stop sending emails, you can use it also as delivery method:
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :letter_thief
config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = trueIf you want emails to be opened immediately, add launchy to your Gemfile.
group :development do
gem "launchy"
endand LetterThief will open emails directly in your Browser like Letter Opener.
If you'd like to store your emails on a separate database, you can configure it via:
config.letter_thief.connects_to = {database: {writing: :letter_thief}} and of course you'll need a separate database
configuration. Here is an example:
development:
primary:
<<: *default
database: my_app_development
letter_thief:
<<: *default
database: my_app_letter_thief_development
migrations_paths: db/letter_thief_migrateNote
Persisting the emails on the database might have privacy related concerns. You might want to encrypt stuff.
Note
You might want to schedule a cleanup job to remove old records from time to time.
Note
For this gem I was heavily inspired by letter_opener, which I used for over ten years. ❤️
Note
I planned to basically just replicate letter_opener but persist emails in the database, so I could use it on Heroku or deplo.io, that's why is called LetterThief. It was supposed to just intercept and block emails from being sent. It ended up being this and also a logging system.
Clone the project and install dependencies with bundle install.
You can run the tests with bin/test. By default they run on sqlite. To run them on postgres or mysql, specify the
TARGET_DB.
bin/test #sqlite
TARGET_DB=postgres bin/test #postgres
TARGET_DB=mysql bin/test #mysqlYou can also sping up a dummy app with bin/rails server and work there.
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/coorasse/letter_thief.
Try to be a decent human being while interacting with other people.
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
- letter_opener is simpler and does not persist emails. This might be indeed be better for your use case. It's also the gem that inspired me to create this one.