Including CSS in an email sent from a task in symfony - php

Question

I am attempting to send an HTML email from a symfony (1.4.6) task, I don't want to send the entire rendered HTML output from a particular module/action, so I am rendering a partial. That's all fine, the issue is that the partial contains CSS references.
Is there a nice 'symfonic' way of including a CSS file in an HTML email from a symfony task, when all I am doing is rendering a specific partial? Or is the only solution to build the HTML head/body manually inside the task, using file_get_contents(cssFile) to grab the CSS file and then concatenating the rendered partial?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem in my project. Here's how I fixed it:
To keep the CSS separate but get it inline before sending the email, we use Emogrifier. Download the source code and put it into %sf_lib_dir%/vendor/emogrifier.
Create a myMailer class that extends sfMailer. Mine is below. There are a few separate functions, but the key function is composeAndSendPartial, which takes a partial name (as a string), inserts all the CSS inline, and sends it. I tried to remove all code that's specific to my project, but I may have left some in. Let me know if it doesn't work for you or if you have any questions.
In factories.yml, set the mailer: to myMailer
myMailer.class.php:
<?php
class myMailer extends sfMailer
{
/**
* Creates a new message with 2 bodies:
* * 1 with $body and MIME type text/html.
* * 1 with $body and tags stripped with MIME type text/plain. Stipped <br/>, </p>, and </div> tags and replaced with \n
*
* #param string|array $from The from address
* #param string|array $to The recipient(s)
* #param string $subject The subject
* #param string $body The body
*
* #return Swift_Message A Swift_Message instance
*/
public function composeAndSendHtml($from, $to, $subject, $body)
{
return $this->send($this->composeHtml($from, $to, $subject, $body));
}
/**
* Sends a message using composeHtml.
*
* #param string|array $from The from address
* #param string|array $to The recipient(s)
* #param string $subject The subject
* #param string $body The body
*
* #return int The number of sent emails
*/
public function composeHtml($from = null, $to = null, $subject = null, $body = null)
{
return Swift_Message::newInstance()
->setFrom($from)
->setTo($to)
->setSubject($subject)
->addPart($this->createPlainTextBody($body), 'text/plain')
->addPart($body, 'text/html');
}
/**
* Attempts to create a plaintext message with all html tags stripped out and new lines inserted as necessary
* #param $body
* #return $body
*/
public function createPlainTextBody($body)
{
$body = preg_replace('/\<br\s*\/?\>/i', "\n", $body); //replace all <br/s> with new lines
$body = preg_replace('/\<\/p\s*\>/i', "</p>\n\n", $body); //append 2 newlines to the end of each </p>
$body = preg_replace('/\<\/div\s*\>/i', "</div>\n\n", $body); //append 2 newlines to the end of each </div>
$body = strip_tags($body); //strip all tags from the body
return $body;
}
/**
* Composes and sends an email with a body from rendering $partial with $parameters
* #param string $from
* #param string $to
* #param string $subject
* #param string $partial the partial as a string. Feel free to change the default module name below
* #param array $parameters Parameters for the partial
* #param array $globalStylesheets The stylesheets that are included globally (usually global.css, maybe others)
*/
public function composeAndSendPartial($from, $to, $subject, $partial, $parameters = array(), $globalStylesheets = array())
{
require_once(sfConfig::get('sf_lib_dir') . '/vendor/emogrifier/emogrifier.php');
$context = sfContext::getInstance();
$response = $context->getResponse();
$originalStylesheets = $response->getStylesheets();
if (false !== $sep = strpos($partial, '/'))
{
$moduleName = substr($partial, 0, $sep);
$templateName = '_' . substr($partial, $sep + 1);
}
else
{
$moduleName = 'email';
$templateName = '_' . $partial;
}
sfConfig::set('sf_is_email', true);
$view = new sfPHPView($context, $moduleName, $templateName, ''); #not sure what 4th parameter does
$view->getAttributeHolder()->add($parameters);
$view->setDecorator(true);
$view->setDecoratorTemplate('email.php');
$html = $view->render();
sfConfig::set('sf_is_email', false);
$emailStylesheets = array_keys(array_diff_key($response->getStylesheets(), $originalStylesheets));
$css = '';
foreach($globalStylesheets as $globalStylesheet)
{
$css .= file_get_contents(sfConfig::get('sf_web_dir') . '/css/' . $globalStylesheet . '.css');
}
foreach ($emailStylesheets as $stylesheet)
{
$css .= file_get_contents(sfConfig::get('sf_web_dir') . '/css/' . $stylesheet . '.css');
$response->removeStylesheet($stylesheet);
}
$emog = new Emogrifier($html, $css);
$body = $emog->emogrify();
$this->composeAndSendHtml($from, $to, $subject, $body);
}
}