Zend_Mail provides a great and simple in use and configuration mechanizm to send emails. The problem begins when you would like to specify fully templated and layouted messages.

In my current project I have several kinds of mails: customer invoices and messages, users notifications, admin notifications, webmaster email about critical errors in scheduled system tasks. In this case the Zend_Layout fits perfectly to redner rich text content by Zend_View, but it is implemented in Zend_Mail, wchih provies simply setBodyText() and setBodyHTML() methods.

This inconvenience is understandable by the way, mainly in context simpe, clear and flexible extendable code of Zend Framework. We will strive to extend the functionality od Zend_Mail following ZF developers concepts.

Overview

Writing class extending Zend_Mail I kept a several concepts:

• Messages should be both templated and layouted using Zend_View and Zend_Layout.
• The email view scripts (templates) there are in main view scripts directory nested in subdirectory (as deep as you want).
• … The same path story with layouts.
• You can use this object excatly the same way as Zend_Mail. It behaviour the same way as parent until you set special options (like point to view script path or file to render in body).
• … and object should keep Zend_Mail fluent interface (returning $this in setters) to provide method chaining fluent interface.
• Pointed view file is rendered as a mail body.
• You can use this object excatly the same way as Zend_Mail. It behaviour the same way as parent until you set special options (like point to view script path or file to render in body).

Zend_Mail application.ini configuration and extending application

Simply paste several lines to application.ini configuration, theare are self-commented, description is not neccessary at this point. We will use SMTP transport:

resources.mail.transport.type = smtp
resources.mail.transport.host = YOUR_HOSTNAME
resources.mail.transport.auth = login
resources.mail.transport.username = "YOUR_ACCOUNT"
resources.mail.transport.password = "YOUR_PASSWORD"
resources.mail.transport.register = true

resources.mail.defaultFrom.email = YOUR_ACCOUNT
resources.mail.defaultFrom.name = "MyService.com"
resources.mail.defaultReplyTo.email = YOUR_ACCOUNT
resources.mail.defaultReplyTo.name = "MyService.com"

In addition we will create tho additional directories and files:

• /application/views/scripts/email/–  just add a subdirectory /email to existing view scripts directory.
• /application/layouts/scripts/email/ – the same story as above

resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/modules/default/views/layouts/scripts/"

To test our class let’s create additional two files:

/application/layouts/scripts/email/html.phtml

< ?php echo $this->layout()->content ?>
--
Best Regards,
MyService.com

and scond one, the information about successfull account register with your own content:

/application/views/scripts/email/AccountRegister.phtml

Thanks for register.

ZentUtil_Mail class usage

Before we will write a code, let’s think abous its usage, wchih should be the same as in Zend_Mail documentation witch additional methods:

$mail = new ZendUtil_Mail('utf-8');
$mail->addTo('athlanster@gmail.com', 'Piotr Pelczar');
$mail->setSubject('Testowy mail z zenda');
$mail->setBodyView('AccountRegister.phtml');
$mail->send();

Above code should send mail from AccountRegister.phtml view script nested in html.phtml layout.

If you want to change layout simply call setViewLayoutScript($script) method with string or set false to disable layouts. For change paths setViewPathDirectory($path), setViewLayoutPathDirectory($path) are available.

ZendUtil_Mail extends Zend_Mail

ZendUtil_Mail has been extended by Zend_Mail and _prepareBody() method has been added. It is called just before parent::send() method.

• Download the ZendUtil_Mail source code.

NOTE: I have added ZendUtil_ namespace.

I hope it will help.