Rails 3 mailer not working and not logging any errors

Question

I have tried all kinds of configurations but still I can't send an email in my development environment from rails.

I installed mailutils to try this from the command line and it worked, I received the email (in spam of course): echo test | mail -s Subject [email protected]

Here's my config:

# Don't care if the mailer can't send
config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = true # still no logs about emails

config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true # I can't believe I have to add this option. Does it even exist? I found it on google.
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
  :enable_starttls_auto => true,
  :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
  :port => 587,
  :domain => "gmail.com",
  :authentication => :login,
  :user_name => "[email protected]",
  :password => "abc123",
}

And here's the code in the mailer:

class UserMailer < ActionMailer::Base
  default :from => "root@ubuntu"

  def test_email
    Rails.logger.debug 'test_email'
    mail(:to => '[email protected]', :subject => "testing rails")
  end
end

The controller:

class PagesController < ApplicationController
  def home
    UserMailer.test_email
  end
end

development.log:

[2012-03-01 18:26:45.859] DEBUG  [bb44dee806d73eb60ab3ae16297f5c02] [127.0.0.1] [GET] [http://myapp:3000/] test_email
[2012-03-01 18:26:45.888]  INFO  [bb44dee806d73eb60ab3ae16297f5c02] [127.0.0.1] [GET] [http://myapp:3000/]   Rendered user_mailer/test_email (1.6ms)
[2012-03-01 18:26:45.898]  INFO  [bb44dee806d73eb60ab3ae16297f5c02] [127.0.0.1] [GET] [http://myapp:3000/]   Rendered pages/home.html.erb within layouts/application (1.1ms)
[2012-03-01 18:26:46.815]  INFO  [bb44dee806d73eb60ab3ae16297f5c02] [127.0.0.1] [GET] [http://myapp:3000/] Completed 200 OK in 455ms (Views: 112.4ms)

I also tried using the console:

root@ubuntu:/srv/www/myapp# rails c
Loading development environment (Rails 3.2.1)
irb(main):001:0> UserMailer.test_email
=> #<Mail::Message:32110400, Multipart: false, Headers: <To: [email protected]>, <Subject: testing rails>, <Mime-Version: 1.0>, <Content-Type: text/html>>

guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html has an example for GMail configuration. It uses 'plain' for the authentication attribute, have you tried it? — ismriv
– ismriv, Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 19:06
yes I tried it and nothing happened. Without any logs this isn't going to work. Everything else in the request is logged correctly — HappyDeveloper
– HappyDeveloper, Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 19:13

Frederick Cheung · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-12 20:25:04Z

27

  UserMailer.test_email

Just creates a Mail::Message object. To actually send an email you need to do

  UserMailer.test_email.deliver

(or starting with rails 4.2 deliver_now / deliver_later)

edited May 12, 2016 at 20:25

answered Mar 1, 2012 at 22:02

Frederick Cheung

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3 Comments

HappyDeveloper Over a year ago

Ok this is embarrassing.. Thanks

0bserver07 Over a year ago

Ow My God! I spent 3 hours, totally forgot about this method! Thanks

jtlindsey Over a year ago

Note for rails 5: DEPRECATION WARNING: #deliver is deprecated and will be removed in Rails 5. Use #deliver_now

Ardee Aram · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-07 02:11:24Z

9

Regarding logging errors:

Just figured out by tinkering that a bang method counterpart exists for deliver, which throws an exception. Can be pretty useful to check if you just misspelled your username or password, or you just have some misconfigured settings.

UserMailer.test_email.deliver!

answered May 7, 2013 at 2:11

Ardee Aram

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Comments

Micah · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-24 21:58:23Z

1

An updated answer for Rails 4.2 would be:

UserMailer.test_email.deliver_now!

The exclamatory mark is to raise an exception if there are any errors.

edited Jun 24, 2016 at 21:58

Micah

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answered Aug 10, 2015 at 6:39

Ethan Yang

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2 Comments

Tim Holt Over a year ago

Exclamation also adds implied urgency :)

Artur INTECH Over a year ago

deliver_now! Delivers an email without checking perform_deliveries and raise_delivery_errors, so use with caution. api.rubyonrails.org/v4.2/classes/ActionMailer/…

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:29:33Z

0

If you suspect it's your settings, try taking out the :domain. It worked for me a while ago.( Net::SMTPAuthenticationError in rails 3.1.0.rc5 when connecting to gmail )

But I don't see a :body option in the mail function. Perhaps that's the issue. Try sending it from rails console and see what happens. http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionMailer/Base.html#method-i-mail

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:29

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 1, 2012 at 19:47

joseph

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