KankakeeCommunityCollege/html-email-node

Generate HTML emails using Node.js.

HTML Email Generator

Generate HTML emails by configuring a JS object and running a command!

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Contents

• HTML Email Generator
  • Contents
  • Overview
  • Requirements
  • Usage
    • 1.) The settings object
      • title
      • fullWidthHeaderImage
      • bodyParagraphArray
      • emailSignature
      • footerMessage
    • 2.) Upload Image Files
    • 3.) Build the email
    • Example HTML email

Overview

This project was built to be an HTML email template for generating HTML email files. KCC uses a common format for html emails particularly when we use them as a response to a form submission.

This mini-project was born out of the frustration of creating HTML email responses. HTML emails are constrained by the limitations of outdated rendering-engines that don't support modern-day HTML5 and CSS3. Instead of coding like it's 1999 we wanted to bring our HTML email workflow into the future.

This project uses a few custom JS modules and Nodejs to create HTML email files (with the .html file-extension.) No dependencies or devDependencies either!

Requirements

• Nodejs - We recommend using NVM to manage node versions

Usage

1. Clone the repository and cd inside:

git clone git@github.com:KankakeeCommunityCollege/html-email-node.git
cd html-email-node

1.) The settings object

The html email file is configured using a settings object found in ./index.js. This object requires the following keys: title, fullWidthHeaderImage.src, fullWidthHeaderImage.alt, bodyParagraphArray, emailSignature, and footerMessage. You will get errors when running index.js if any settings are missing.

const settings = {
  title: 'Email Title',
  fullWidthHeaderImage: {
    src: 'url/to/image-file.png',
    alt: 'Alt text for image-file',
  },
  bodyParagraphArray: [
    par1,
    par2 //,
    // par3, ...
  ],
  emailSignature: 'signature content',
  footerMessage: 'footer content',
}

These settings correspond to the sections of the email as shown below.

title

Required: Yes
Type: String

settings.title Must be a string or a variable containing a string. It should be set to the title of your email.

fullWidthHeaderImage

Required: Yes
Type: Object

The fullWidthHeaderImage key needs to be set to an object containing 2 keys. This object requires a src and alt key. The src should be set to the URL for your emails header image. The alt key should be the descriptive alternate text for the image.

Both fullWidthHeaderImage.src and fullWidthHeaderImage.alt should use a string for their values.

const settings = {
  // other settings omitted
  fullWidthHeaderImage: {
    src: 'https://url/to/image.jpg',
    alt: 'Descriptive text for screen readers'
  }
}

Note: There is a folder on Web03 specifically for this purpose websites/cdn/graphics. Your image should be uploaded there already.

Note: This image will be the full width of the email's content.

bodyParagraphArray

Required: Yes Type: Array

The bodyParagraphArray key requires an array as the value. Each item of this array needs to be a string representing one paragraph of the email's main body-text.

You can use inline-HTML but remember that modern HTML will not work as expected in html emails. Be sure to use a forward-slash in breaks, horizontal rules, and image elements (e.g. <br /> and not <br>.)

For readability purposes it is usually best define each paragraph as its own variable and then plug those variables into the bodyParagraphArray array.

emailSignature

Required: Yes Type: String

The emailSignature is for the signature portion of the email. It should be set to a string representing your signature-block. Inline-html is allowed, but remember HTML5 won't work.

It is probably best to create a variable for the email signature and set the emailSignature key to your variable:

const signature = `Wesley Zajicek<br />
        Technician II<br />
        Kankakee Community College<br />
        Marketing Department<br />
        <a style="display: inline-block;" href="mailto:wdzajicek@kcc.edu">wdzajicek@kcc.edu</a>`;

footerMessage

Required: Yes Type: String

The footerMessage will be the bottom-most content in the email. IT usually contains general information about the email and/or copyright info.

Note: The year variable is defined towards the top of index.js. Use the year variable to set the copyright year and it will always be the current year.

2.) Upload Image Files

For images to work in the resulting HTML email the image files need to be hosted on a public KCC url.

There is a specific folder on Web03 in the cdn subdomain for this purpose. Upload all image files to https://cdn.kcc.edu/graphics which has the following path on web03.kcc.edu: websites > kcc.edu > cdn > graphics or web03.kcc.edu/websites/kcc.edu/cdn/graphics/.

3.) Build the email

To build the email either use the build npm script or run the node command:

npm run build
# or
node index.js

This creates a new .html file inside the dist/ folder containing all of the awful, hideous, and old-school HTML for your email--annoying nested tables and all!

Example HTML email

Below is a screenshot of an email generated using this project. You can see the full-width header-image at the top, the email body, signature line, and footer message. The logo and social media links are part of the template.