What is the best way to use Email Template in Zend/PHP

Question

I am working on a website where Users create their accounts. I need to send email to users on many oceans. For example when signup, forgot password, order summary etc. I want to use emails templates for this. I need your suggestions for this. I want to use a way that If I change any email template or login in less time and changes.

I have thought about the following way:

I have a table for email templates like this:

id
emailSubject
emailBody
emailType

For example when user forgot password:

id:

1

emailSubject:

ABC: Link for Password Change

emailBody:

<table border=0>
<tr><td>
   <b> Dear [[username]] <b/>
</td></tr>

<tr><td>
   This email is sent to you in response of your password recovery request. If you want to change your password, please click the following link:<br />
[[link1]]
<br/>
If you don't want to change your password then click the following link:<br/>
[[link2]]
</tr></td>

<tr><td>
   <b>ABC Team</b>
</td></tr>

</table>

emailType:

ForgotPassword

Prepare email data:

$emailFields["to"] = "[email protected]";
$emailFields["username"] = "XYZ";
$emailFields["link1"] = "http://abc.com/changepassword?code='123'";
$emailFields["link2"] = "http://abc.com/ignorechangepasswordreq?code='123'";
$emailFields["emailTemplate"] = "ForgotPassword";

Now Pass the all fields to this function to send email:

sendEmail( $emailFields ){
 // Get email template from database using emailTemplate name.
 // Replace all required fields(username, link1,link2) in body.
 // set to,subject,body
 // send email using zend or php
}

I planed to use above method. Can you suggest better way or some change in above logic.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd use Zend_View. Store your templates in /views/email/EMAILNAME.phtml, create a Zend_View object with the required email template and pass it the required data.

Answer 2

Off the top of my head, so untested... but something similar should work:

$view = new Zend_View();
$view->setScriptPath( '/path/to/your/email/templates' );
$view->assign( $yourArrayOfEmailTemplateVariables );
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
// maybe leave out phtml extension here, not sure
$mail->setBodyHtml( $view->render( 'yourHtmlTemplate.phtml' ) );
$mail->setBodyText( $view->render( 'yourTextTemplate.phtml' ) );

Answer 3

As previously mentioned, Zend_View is the way. Here is how I do this:

$template = clone($this->view);
$template->variable = $value;
$template->myObject = (object)$array;
// ...
$html = $template->render('/path/filename.phtml');

Use Markdownify to covert to plain text:

$converter = new Markdownify_Extra;
$text = $converter->parserString($html);

Setup mail:

$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setBodyHtml($html);
$mail->setBodyText($text);

Then setup Transport and send.