This plugin provides an interface for creating emails on the fly and store them in a queue to be processed later by an offline worker using a cakephp shell command.

It also contains a handy shell for previewing queued emails, a very handy tool for modifying email templates and watching the result.

• CakePHP 2.x

The only installation method supported by this plugin is by using composer. Just add this to your composer.json configuration:

{
  "require" : {
	"lorenzo/cakephp-email-queue": "1.0"
  }
}

In 2.0 you need to enable the plugin your app/Config/bootstrap.php file:

CakePlugin::load('EmailQueue');

If you are already using CakePlugin::loadAll();, then this is not necessary.

In order to use this plugin, you need to create a database table. Required SQL is located at

# Config/Schema/email_queue.sql

Just load it into your database.

Whenever you need to send an email, use the EmailQueue model to create and queue a new one by storing the correct data:

ClassRegistry::init('EmailQueue.EmailQueue')->enqueue($to, $data, $options);

enqueue method receives 3 arguments:

• First argument is a string or array of email addresses that will be treated as recipients.
• Second arguments is an array of view variables to be passed to the email template
• Third arguments is an array of options, possible options are

• subject : Email's subject
• send_at : date time sting representing the time this email should be sent at (in UTC)
• template : the name of the element to use as template for the email message
• layout : the name of the layout to be used to wrap email message
• format : Type of template to use (html, text or both)
• headers: A key-value list of headers to send in the email
• config : the name of the email config to be used for sending

It is possible to preview emails that are still in the queue, this is very handy during development to check if the rendered email looks at it should; no need to queue the email again, just make the changes to the template and run the preview again:

# Console/cake EmailQueue.preview

Emails should be sent using bundled Sender command, use -h modifier to read available options

# Console/cake EmailQueue.sender -h

You can configure this command to be run under a cron or any other tool you wish to use.