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Template parser and newsletters - Printable Version

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Template parser and newsletters - El Forum - 08-27-2010

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
HI all,

I'm building a newsletter module and i need you advice Smile

Basically, newsletter's templates are selectables and edtable by the administrator with ckeditor.
Newsletters and Templates are saved in a mysql table as html. Elements like {name}, {site_url}, {unsubscrib} {account} ...etc are parsed with the codeigniter template parser. But in this situaltion, the limitation of template parse class is it needs a view file, so not really 'out of the box' for html saved in a database.
This is how i've managed to get it working:

The controller who gets subscribers form model, and send mails:

Code:
// this function gets te whole newsletter object (subject, body...etc) and specfics data to parse
    function _parse_newsletter($newsletter, $parsers = array())
    {
        $this->load->library('parser');
        
        // default values
        $parse = array(
            'site_name' => $this->common->meta('site_name'),
            'site_url'  => site_url(),
            'subject'    => $newsletter->nl_subject
        );
        
        if (is_array($parsers) && count($parsers) > 0)
        {
            $parse = $parsers + $parse;
        }
        
        // template is a class (controller) property accessible from view file
        $this->template = $newsletter->nl_body;
        return $this->parser->parse('newsletter/newsletter_view', $parse, true);
    }

     // this is not the whole function... too long to post here
     // we loops throught subscribers and assign individuals values, then send mails
    function send_newsletter()
    {
        //... getting $newsletter and $subscribers batch before loop...
        foreach ($subscribers as $subscriber)
        {
            $data['account']= site_url('newsletters/newsletter_account/'.$subscriber->nl_hash);
            $data['name']    = $subscriber->nl_name;
            $data['email']    = $subscriber->nl_email;
            $data['view_online'] = site_url('newsletters/online/subscriber/'.$subscriber->nl_hash.'/id/'.$newsletter->nl_hash);
                
            $newsletter_body = $this->_parse_newsletter($newsletter, $data);            
            $this->email->clear();
            
            $config['mailtype'] = 'html';
            $config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
            $this->email->initialize($config);
                                  
            $this->email->to($subscriber->nl_email);
            $this->email->from('[email protected]');
            $this->email->subject($newsletter->nl_subject);
            $this->email->message($newsletter_body);
            $email_sent = $this->email->send();
        }
    }

finally, in the view file (newsletter_view.php) called by _parse_newsletter function, i simply echo $this->template property:
Code:
<?php
    echo $this->template;
?>

Do you think we can do this in a simpliest way? i prefer use the native codeigniter class instead of writing new ones, and it's the 'best' way i found to send personnalized mails not templated in a php file. But maybe i'm on the wrong path...