How to send HTML content in email from net//smtp in ruby? - html

Question

Pertinent code:
msg = "Subject: Reset password instructions\n\nHello " + #request_payload["email"] + "!\n\n" +
"A new account has been created for you at <a href=\"presentation-layer.dev\">presentation-layer.dev<a>." +
"Please go to that page and click \"forgot password\" to set your password."
smtp = Net::SMTP.new 'smtp.gmail.com', 587
smtp.enable_starttls
smtp.start('domain', "email", 'password', :login) do
smtp.send_message(msg, 'sender', "recip")
end
The resulting email just has the raw text in it. How do I get the server to evaluate the HTML tags?

Answer 1

To do what you want, you should generate a MIME document. If you really want to do it right, create a multipart MIME document so you have both the TEXT and rich-text parts.
You can do it from Net::SMTP, but you have to add the necessary MIME header and part dividers to the document. See "Sending Email using Ruby - SMTP" for an example how.
It's easier to use the Mail gem, which supports both, especially if you're including multiple parts or adding attachments. From the documentation:
You can also create MIME emails. There are helper methods for making a multipart/alternate email for text/plain and text/html (the most common pair) and you can manually create any other type of MIME email.
And farther down in the document in "Writing and sending a multipart/alternative (html and text) email":
Mail makes some basic assumptions and makes doing the common thing as simple as possible.... (asking a lot from a mail library)
mail = Mail.deliver do
to 'nicolas#test.lindsaar.net.au'
from 'Mikel Lindsaar <mikel#test.lindsaar.net.au>'
subject 'First multipart email sent with Mail'
text_part do
body 'This is plain text'
end
html_part do
content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
body '<h1>This is HTML</h1>'
end
end

Answer 2

Sounds like you need to set the 'Content-Type' header:
Content-Type: text/html;