Why can't the Mail block see my variable?

Question

I\'m new to Ruby and wondering why I am getting an error in this situation using the \'mail\' gem in a simple Sinatra app:

post \"/email/send\" do

  @recipient          


        

Answer 1

If you'll read through the docs for Mail further you'll find a nice alternate solution that will work. Rather than use:

Mail.deliver do 
  to @recipient # throws error as this is undefined
  from 'server@domain.com'
  subject 'testing sendmail'
  body 'testing sendmail'
end

you can use Mail's new() method, passing in parameters, and ignore the block:

Mail.new(
  to:      @recipient,
  from:    'server@domain.com',
  subject: 'testing sendmail',
  body:    'testing sendmail'
).deliver!

or the alternate hash element definitions:

Mail.new(
  :to      => @recipient,
  :from    => 'server@domain.com',
  :subject => 'testing sendmail',
  :body    => 'testing sendmail'
).deliver!

In pry, or irb you'd see:

pry(main)> Mail.new(
pry(main)* to: 'me@domain.com',
pry(main)* from: 'me@' << `hostname`.strip,
pry(main)* subject: 'test mail gem',
pry(main)* body: 'this is only a test'
pry(main)* ).deliver!
=> #, , , >, , , , >

The new method has several variations you can use. This is from the docs also, and might work better:

As a side note, you can also create a new email through creating a Mail::Message object directly and then passing in values via string, symbol or direct method calls. See Mail::Message for more information.

 mail = Mail.new
 mail.to = 'mikel@test.lindsaar.net'
 mail[:from] = 'bob@test.lindsaar.net'
 mail['subject'] = 'This is an email'
 mail.body = 'This is the body'

followed by mail.deliver!.

Also note, in the previous example, that there are multiple ways to access the various headers in the message envelope. It's a flexible gem that seems to be well thought out and nicely follows the Ruby way.