/dev/Kico

Sending e-mails with Grails: the simple way

Sending e-mails with Grails can be quite complicated (yeap, I know about the Mail Plugin, but I also know many people who had some problems with it AND it’s a Grails only alternative).

If you don´t want to use a plugin, you can always count with the Java Mail API, or even the Spring Framework support for it, right? Yeah, right: but at least for me, it seems like a to complex solution for a simple need. So, I started my quest for a simple way to do it. The solution I found was right in front of me all the time (so usual…): Commons E-mail, which is part of the Apache Commons project!

To show how you can use it, here is a small snippet:

import org.apache.commons.mail.SimpleEmail
class MailService {

boolean transactional = false
// I added the configuration on the same class just for the sake of simplicity (you should NEVER do this on a real case)
String host= "your.mail.ver"
String username = "your.login"
String password = "your.password"
String from = "me@me.com"
Integer port = 465

def send(String subject, String msg, String to) {

//SimpleEmail is the class which will do all the hard work for you
SimpleEmail email = new SimpleEmail()
email.setHostName(host)
email.addTo(to)
email.setFrom(from)
email.setSubject(subject)
email.setMsg(msg)

//If you need authentication, this is the method
email.setAuthentication(username,password)

// If you need to specify your smtp port, this is how to
email.setSmtpPort(port)

// So all you need to do is call the method send() and your e-mail will be delivered (at least in theory)
email.send()
}
}

Just like I wanted: simple!

Dependencies

All you need is JAF, which may be downloaded on the following link: http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/desktop/javabeans/jaf/index.jsp

Where to download Commons E-mail: http://commons.apache.org/email/