Laravel Mail Notification Tips & Tricks

Almost in every application that we develop, we need to send some kind of notification. Laravel comes with a very nice responsive template for emails that we use a lot of times without changing much of it.

Basics

Creating a Notification is as easy as executing the following command

php artisan make:notification InvoicePaid

This will create a file in the `app/notifications` folder.

To send a notification we use this code

Notification::send($users, new InvoicePaid($invoice));
// or
$user->notify(new InvoicdPaid($invoice);

MailMessage

The basic structure and functionality that we use most of the time are as follows.

/**
 * Get the mail representation of the notification.
 *
 * @param  mixed  $notifiable
 * @return \Illuminate\Notifications\Messages\MailMessage
 */
public function toMail($notifiable)
{
    $url = url('/invoice/'.$this->invoice->id);

    return (new MailMessage)
                ->greeting('Hello!')
                ->line('One of your invoices has been paid!')
                ->action('View Invoice', $url)
                ->line('Thank you for using our application!');
}

Probably you already know but we can publish the HTML and Text resources.

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=laravel-notifications

// and

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=laravel-mail

Tips and Tricks

In the past section we took a look at what is the basic an normal situation creating an Email Notification.

Let's see all the options that MailMessage provides and how to use them.

• greeting(string $text)
• salutation(string $text)
• line(\Illuminate\Contracts\Support\Htmlable|string|array $text)
• success()
• error()
• level('info') //'info','success','error'
• subject(string $text)
• action(string $text, string $url)

Example

/**
     * Get the mail representation of the notification.
     *
     * @param  mixed  $notifiable
     * @return \Illuminate\Notifications\Messages\MailMessage
     */
    public function toMail($notifiable)
    {
        return (new MailMessage)
                    ->subject('Lorem ipsum')
                    ->greeting('Greeting Victor Yoalli!')
                    ->salutation(new HtmlString('<strong>Salutation</strong> Victor Yoalli!'))
                    ->line('Line of Plain Text')
                    ->with(new HtmlString('<b>new HtmlString</b>("using with.")'))
                    ->action('Notification Action', url('/'))
                    ->line(new HtmlString(‘<b>new HtmlString</b>("using <i>line</i>.")'))
                    ->line(['array of elements:[','uno','dos','tres',']using line'])
                    ->level('info')
                    ->error()
                    ->success()
                    ->line('Thank you for using our application!');
    }

As you you can see in the result the:

• subject() function is not show because is the email subject.
• greeting() will always be shown at the beginning no matter where you call this function.
• salutation() is similar to greeting but it will be shown at the end.
• line() accepts 3 type of data: string, HtmlString and array(), I use the three cases in this example.
• with() is similar to line()
• action() prints a call to action button and it can only be one. If you try to add more than one, the last one will be displayed.
• error() will change the color red, success() to green of the action() button, the default is blue which is the same as if you use level(‘info’).
• level() have the same effect, except that you need to specify 'info','error' or 'success'.

Result

Laravel Email Notification Example

I hope it helps. :)