django-email-signals 0.0.1

A Django app that allows users to dynamically send emails whenever there are some changes on some tables..

Django Email Signals

A Django application that provides functionality to create signals via the admin panel which will send emails based on some changes to some models.

The application allows you to set your own constraints and email templates and aims to achieve this with minimal configuration.

Installation

Using Pip: pip install django-email-signals

Using Git: git clone https://github.com/Salaah01/django-email-signals.git

Setup

1. Add to INSTALLED_APPS Add ckeditor and email_signals to your INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py. This should be added after any apps which contain models for which you would like to create signals using this application.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
  'app_1`,
  'app_2`,
  '...',
  'ckeditor',
  'email_signals`
]

2. Run Migrations and Collect Static

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py collectstatic

3. Add a Default Email (Optional) Add EMAIL_SIGNAL_DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL to your settings. e.g: EMAIL_SIGNAL_DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '[e-mail] This will setup a default email address to send emails from should you choose not to explicitly set one when creating signals.

4. Add the Model Mixin On the models that you want to raise signals, you will need to add the following mixin as a dependency to the models: email_signals.models.EmailSignalMixin.

Example: Let's suppose you have the following model.

from django.db import models

class Customer(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True)
    email = models.CharField(max_length=200)

You would need to change this model to the following:

from email_signals.models import EmailSignalMixin

class Customer(models.Model, EmailSignalMixin):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True)
    email = models.CharField(max_length=200)

5. Add Recipients Depending on the change to the data, you may want to send an email to different people. We facilitate this by setting up the various possible mailing lists into the model itself. This one is easier to show first then explain:

from email_signals.models import EmailSignalMixin

class Customer(models.Model, EmailSignalMixin):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200, null=True)
    email = models.CharField(max_length=200)

    def get_email_signal_emails_1(self):
        """Recipient is the customer."""
        return [self.email]

    def get_email_signal_emails_2(self):
        """Recipient list includes management."""
        return ['[e-mail]', '[e-mail]']

Notice that we have two functions, each function starts with "get_email_signal_emails_" and then a positive integer. Each of these functions return a mailing list and we can create as many of these as we need (unless you have to need more than 2,147,483,647 mailing lists). Later on, when we setup the signals, we will need to enter a positive integer to indicate which mailing list to choose when sending an email.

Adding Signals

Now that the setup is complete, signals can be added via the admin (or by updating the database directly).

We will imagine I am running a site on localhost and so the admin panel can be found by navigating to http://localhost:8000/admin/. The signals can then be accessed by navigating to http://localhost:8000/admin/email_signals/signal/. We will start by adding some signals. Click on "add signal" to get started.

A wise man taught me it's better to sound silly for a moment than not know something and feel stupid forever. So, in that vein, though it might seem obvious, we'll go through the options in the form and discuss what each option is responsible for.

Field Label	Field Name	Description
Name	name	An name for your signal, just to make it easier to distinguish from other records.
Description	description	(Optional) Description for your signal.
Model (Table)	content_type	The model which this signal relates to.
Plain text email	plain_text_email	(Optional) Plain text email to send.
HTML email	html_email	(Optional) HTML email to send.
Subject	subject	Email subject
From email	from_email	(Optional) The email sender. Defaults to settings.EMAIL_SIGNAL_DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL.
Mailing list no	to_emails_opt	The recipient list where the integer you enter (i), corresponds to a method called get_email_signal_emails_<i> in the model.
Template	template	(Optional) Path to a template, should you wish to render an email from a template.
Signal Type	signal_type	Type of signal to raise for this record.
Active	active	A switch to turn this signal on and off.

Signal Constraints This inline model is where you can set some constraints which will determine if the signal should be raised on a case by case basis.

Field Label	Field Name	Description
Parameter 1	param_1	The first parameter to use when testing a constraint. This parameter must exist in the signal kwargs or the model instance.
Comparison	comparison	Define how to compare the parameters. E.g: parameter 1 is greater than parameter 2.
Parameter 1	param_1	(Optional) The second parameter to use when testing a constraint. This parameter can be left empty when the constraint is something sensible. For example, if constraint is "Is True" then there is no need for parameter 2. But if the constraint is, "Greater Than", then parameter 2 is needed. Parameter 2 can also be a primitive type such as 'a', '1', '1.1'. The application will attempt to convert strings into numbers if it can.

Parameters are Deep Both parameters 1 and 2 allow you to search deep inside an object. Let's suppose we have the following structure and signal has received a CustomerOrder instance.

classDiagram
    User <| -- Customer
    Customer <| -- CustomerOrder

    class User {
      id
      first_name
      last_name
      email
    }

    class Customer {
      id
      user
      fav_language
    }

    class CustomerOrder {
      id
      customer
      order_id
      total
    }

Given a CustomerOrder instance (we'll call this variable order), we can set the following in our constraints:

#	Parameter 1	Comparison	Parameter 2
1	'customer.user.id'	Greater Than	'5'
2	'customer.user.first_name'	Equal To	'customer.user.last_name'

Constraint 1 will check the following:

order.customer.user.id > 5

Similarly, constraint 2 will check the following:

order.customer.user.first_name == order.customer.user.last_name

Only when all constraints are satisfied will the email be sent.

Playground

The repository comes with an example project to get you started. If you prefer to test this application yourself then I recommend cloning the repository.

Navigating to example and running the Django project inside.