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Symfony Mailer: Love Sending Emails Again
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Let's transform this Twig template into a PDF.

Back in AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand, right before we create the Email, this is where we'll generate the PDF, so we can attach it. To do that, our command needs two new services: Environment $twig - yes, it looks weird, but the type-hint to get Twig directly is called Environment - and Pdf $pdf. That second service comes from SnappyBundle.

86 lines src/Command/AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand.php
... lines 1 - 6
use Knp\Snappy\Pdf;
... lines 8 - 16
use Twig\Environment;
... line 18
class AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand extends Command
{
... lines 21 - 28
public function __construct(UserRepository $userRepository, ArticleRepository $articleRepository, MailerInterface $mailer, Environment $twig, Pdf $pdf)
{
... lines 31 - 37
}
... lines 39 - 84
}

As a reminder, if you don't know what type-hint to use, you can always spin over to your terminal and run:

php bin/console debug:autowiring pdf

There it is!

Ok, step 1 is to use Twig to render the template and get the HTML: $html = $this->twig->render(). Oh... PhpStorm doesn't like that... because I forgot to add the properties! I'll put my cursor on the new arguments, hit Alt+Enter, and select "Initialize Fields" to create those 2 properties and set them.

86 lines src/Command/AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand.php
... lines 1 - 6
use Knp\Snappy\Pdf;
... lines 8 - 16
use Twig\Environment;
... line 18
class AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand extends Command
{
... lines 21 - 25
private $twig;
private $pdf;
public function __construct(UserRepository $userRepository, ArticleRepository $articleRepository, MailerInterface $mailer, Environment $twig, Pdf $pdf)
{
... lines 31 - 35
$this->twig = $twig;
$this->pdf = $pdf;
}
... lines 39 - 84
}

Now, back to work: $this->twig->render() and pass this the template name - email/author-weekly-report-pdf.html.twig - and an array of the variables it needs... which I think is just articles. Pass 'articles' => $articles.

86 lines src/Command/AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand.php
... lines 1 - 18
class AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand extends Command
{
... lines 21 - 46
protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
{
... lines 49 - 53
foreach ($authors as $author) {
... lines 55 - 59
if (count($articles) === 0) {
continue;
}
$html = $this->twig->render('email/author-weekly-report-pdf.html.twig', [
'articles' => $articles,
]);
... lines 68 - 79
}
... lines 81 - 83
}
}

To turn that HTML into PDF content, we can say $pdf = $this->pdf->getOutputFromHtml($html).

86 lines src/Command/AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand.php
... lines 1 - 18
class AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand extends Command
{
... lines 21 - 46
protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
{
... lines 49 - 53
foreach ($authors as $author) {
... lines 55 - 64
$html = $this->twig->render('email/author-weekly-report-pdf.html.twig', [
'articles' => $articles,
]);
$pdf = $this->pdf->getOutputFromHtml($html);
... lines 69 - 79
}
... lines 81 - 83
}
}

Cool, right! Behind the scenes, this simple method does a lot: it takes the HTML content, saves it to a temporary file, then executes wkhtmltopdf and points it at that file. As long as wkhtmltopdf is set up correctly... and our HTML generates a nice-looking page, it should work!

If all has gone well, the $pdf variable will now be a string containing the actual PDF content... which we could do anything with, like save to a file or attach to an email. Why, what a wonderful idea!

Adding an Attachment

Adding an attachment to an email... probably looks exactly like you would expect: ->attach(). The first argument is the file contents - so $pdf. If you need to attach something big, you can also use a file resource here - like use fopen on a file and pass the file handle so you don't need to read the whole thing into memory. The second argument will be the filename for the attachment. Let's uses weekly-report-%s.pdf and pass today's date for the wildcard: date('Y-m-d').

87 lines src/Command/AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand.php
... lines 1 - 18
class AuthorWeeklyReportSendCommand extends Command
{
... lines 21 - 46
protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
{
... lines 49 - 53
foreach ($authors as $author) {
... lines 55 - 67
$pdf = $this->pdf->getOutputFromHtml($html);
$email = (new TemplatedEmail())
... lines 71 - 74
->context([
... lines 76 - 77
])
->attach($pdf, sprintf('weekly-report-%s.pdf', date('Y-m-d')));
$this->mailer->send($email);
}
... lines 82 - 84
}
}

Love it! We're ready to try this thing. Find your terminal and run:

php bin/console app:author-weekly-report:send

As a reminder, even though this looks like it's sending to six authors, it's a lie! It's really looping over 6 possible authors, but only sending emails to those that have written an article within the past 7 days. Because the database fixtures for this project have a bunch of randomness, this might send to 5 users, 2 users... or 0 users. If it doesn't send any emails, try reloading your fixtures by running:

php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load

If you are so lucky that it's sending more than 2 emails, you'll get an error from Mailtrap, because it limits sending 2 emails per 10 seconds on the free plan. You can ignore the error or reload the fixtures.

In my case, in Mailtrap... yea! This sent 2 emails. If I click on the first one... it looks good... and it has an attachment! Let's open it up!

Oh... ok... I guess it technically worked... but it looks terrible. This definitely did not have Bootstrap CSS applied to it. The question is: why not?

Next, let's put on our debugging hats, get to the bottom of this mystery, and crush this bug.

Leave a comment!

  • 2019-12-30 AbelardoLG

    I think so.

    My pleasure!

    Brs.

  • 2019-12-30 Victor Bocharsky

    Hey AbelardoLG,

    Hm, this sounds like a workaround: you kill the old instance and create a new one. Sounds like a bug? Anyway, thank you for sharing this tip with others.

    Cheers!

  • 2019-12-29 AbelardoLG

    Hi there.

    If you are using the Dompdf library (like me), and it outputs the following message:

    No block-level parent found. Not good.

    at the end of the foreach (inside its body), you should write the following lines of code:
    - - unset($this->pdf); // $this->pdf is the object belongs to the PDF library that you use
    - - $this->pdf = new Dompdf(); // you should recreate again the object.

  • 2019-12-02 Diego Aguiar

    Oh boy, Windows been Windows... Thanks for sharing it!

  • 2019-12-02 donchev

    For Windows 10 Users (if there are others besides me :D):

    I had to move the installation of the wkhtmltopdf from Program Files to C:/ so there are not any spaces in the path eg: "Program FIles"

    My .env config:

    ###> knplabs/knp-snappy-bundle ###
    WKHTMLTOPDF_PATH='C:\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltopdf.exe'
    WKHTMLTOIMAGE_PATH='C:\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltoimage.exe'
    ###< knplabs/knp-snappy-bundle ###

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