Node Email API

The API is built on top of Node.js with Express.js, Nodemailer and Handlebars.

Sending emails can be a challenge at times, especially consistent, responsive and well designed HTML emails with all the css goodness.

Feature list

• Single POST endpoint for emails
• Secured with API Keys (must serve over HTTPS in production)
• No database required (can be added if required)
• Configurations for
  • Transports (Create transports for Gmail, SendGrid and Office365)
  • Profiles (One or more transport definitions)

Transport Configurations

SendGrid

• You will need a SendGrid API Key, you can be generated once you have an account.

Gmail

• You must have a Gmail account and enable App Passwords, this will be the password used in the API.
• https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Office 365

• You must have an Office 365 account with an active Office 365 E3 license and have Authenticed SMTP access.
• If your account has 2FA enabled, you must also create an App Password to be used in the API.
• https://mysignins.microsoft.com/security-info

Getting Started

Download or clone the project, then run npm install to install required dependencies.

Create a .env file in the root for app secrets. See .env-example, copy content into the new file and set the credentials for the transport you are using.

Use an API client like Postman to add the following.

• Method: POST
• URL: http://localhost:3000/email
• Header: x-api-key (and value).
• Body: (below)
• Set profileName to match transport.

// development01 = gmail
// development02 = office365
// development03 = sendgrid
{
    "profileName": "development01",
    "message": {
        "to": [
            "[email protected]"
        ],
        "subject": "🥳 Node Email Service",
        "template": "example-1", // must match template naming
        "context": {
            "name": "Your Name"
        }
    }
}

Further Configuration

Profiles

src/config/profiles.config.js

This file allows you to create a profiles for a given transport. Each profile also has a from address object as required by most service providers.

// Example using the Gmail transport for profile 'development01'
case 'development01':
    return {
        transporter: transport.createGmail(env.email.gmail.email, env.email.gmail.password),
        address: {
            to: ['...'], // This will overwrite the [to] prop from request body [message.to]
            from: {
                name: 'Gmail Node Email API',
                address: env.email.gmail.email
            }
        }
    }
    // More profiles in the switch statement

Templates

Templates require 2 files, a view (.handlebars) and context (.js) file. These must be in the following folders with the same file name.

• /src/templates/context/example-1.js
  • The context file must exist.
  • It must export an object with optional default values. (can be empty module.export = {})
  • This file will be merged with the layout.js file and request body.
• /src/templates/view/example-1.handlebars
  • This file contains the HTML within the layout.handlebars file.

Analyse the files to understand how to embed images and data.

The message configuration is combination of

• Nodemailer
  • https://nodemailer.com/message/
• Nodemailer Express Handlebars
  • This replaces Nodemailers text + html options with template + context.
  • https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodemailer-express-handlebars