The easy way sending an email using Laravel Framework

Laravel is a popular PHP web framework that provides a rich set of tools and libraries to build complex web applications. One of the most useful features of Laravel is its built-in support for sending emails, which can be easily integrated with other Laravel features such as the task scheduler and the job queue.

In this article, we will explore how to send scheduled emails using Laravel and the job queue. We will begin by discussing the basics of Laravel's email system and then move on to exploring the Laravel task scheduler and the job queue. Finally, we will put everything together and show you how to use Laravel to send scheduled emails using the job queue.

Laravel Email System

Laravel provides a simple and powerful API for sending emails. The framework supports multiple email drivers, including SMTP, Mailgun, Mandrill, Amazon SES, and more. By default, Laravel uses the PHP's built-in mail function to send emails, but you can configure Laravel to use any email driver of your choice.

Sending an email in Laravel is easy. You can use the Mail facade to send an email in just a few lines of code. Here is an example of sending a basic email:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;

Mail::to('john@example.com')->send(new OrderShipped());

The to method specifies the recipient of the email, while the send method sends the email using the default email driver.

Laravel Task Scheduler

The Laravel task scheduler allows you to schedule tasks to run at specific intervals. You can use the task scheduler to automate tasks such as sending emails, cleaning up temporary files, and more. The task scheduler is built on top of the Unix cron daemon and provides a simple, fluent interface for defining your scheduled tasks.

Here is an example of scheduling a task to send an email every day at 9:00 AM:

// app/Console/Kernel.php

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    $schedule->call(function () {
        Mail::to('john@example.com')->send(new DailyReport());
    })->dailyAt('09:00');
}

The schedule method is called when the Artisan schedule:run command is executed. In this example, we are scheduling a task to send a daily report email to John at 9:00 AM every day.

Laravel Job Queue

The Laravel job queue provides a simple and powerful way to perform time-consuming tasks in the background. You can use the job queue to perform tasks such as sending emails, generating reports, and more. The job queue is built on top of the powerful and robust Laravel queue system, which supports multiple queue drivers, including Redis, Beanstalkd, Amazon SQS, and more.

Here is an example of dispatching a job to send an email using the job queue:

SendEmailJob::dispatch($user, new OrderShipped())->delay(now()->addMinutes(10));

In this example, we are dispatching a SendEmailJob to send an email to the specified user with a 10-minute delay.

Sending Scheduled Emails using Laravel and Queue

Now that we have covered the basics of Laravel's email system, task scheduler, and job queue, let's put everything together and see how to send scheduled emails using the job queue.

First, we need to create a new job that sends the email. We can use the Mail facade to send the email in the handle method of the job:

<?php

namespace App\Jobs;

use Illuminate\Bus\Queueable;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Bus\Dispatchable;
use Illuminate\Queue\InteractsWithQueue;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Mail\Mailable;

class SendScheduledEmail implements ShouldQueue
{
   use Dispatchable, InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;
   protected $recipient;
   protected $mailable;

   /**
    * Create a new job instance.
    *
    * @param string $recipient
    * @param Mailable $mailable
    */
   public function __construct(string $recipient, Mailable $mailable)
   {
       $this->recipient = $recipient;
       $this->mailable = $mailable;
   }

   /**
    * Execute the job.
    *
    * @return void
    */
   public function handle()
   {
       Mail::to($this->recipient)->send($this->mailable);
   }
}

Now, we can use the Laravel task scheduler to schedule the job to run at specific intervals. For example, to send a weekly newsletter email to all subscribers, we can define the following scheduled task:

SendEmailJob::dispatch($user, new OrderShipped())->delay(now()->addMinutes(10));

In this example, we are scheduling the SendScheduledEmail job to run every Monday at 9:00 AM with the WeeklyNewsletter mailable.

Finally, we need to configure the Laravel job queue to process the scheduled email jobs. We can use the php artisan queue:work command to start a worker process that listens to the job queue and processes the scheduled email jobs:

<?php
// app/Console/Kernel.php

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    $schedule->job(new SendScheduledEmail('john@example.com', new WeeklyNewsletter()))
        ->weekly()->mondays()->at('09:00');
}

In this example, we are starting a worker process that listens to the scheduled-emails queue.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored how to send scheduled emails using Laravel and the job queue. We started by discussing the basics of Laravel's email system and then moved on to exploring the Laravel task scheduler and the job queue. Finally, we put everything together and showed you how to use Laravel to send scheduled emails using the job queue.

By using Laravel's built-in email system, task scheduler, and job queue, you can easily automate the process of sending emails and other time-consuming tasks. This can help you save time and increase the efficiency of your application