How can I send emails in Rails 3 using the recipient's locale?

Question

How can I send mails in a mailer using the recipient's locale. I have the preferred locale for each user in the database. Notice this is different from the current locale (I18n.locale), as long as the current user doesn't have to be the recipient. So the difficult thing is to use the mailer in a different locale without changing I18n.locale:

def new_follower(user, follower)
  @follower = follower
  @user = user
  mail :to=>@user.email
end

Using I18n.locale = @user.profile.locale before mail :to=>... would solve the mailer issue, but would change the behaviour in the rest of the thread.

Answer 1

This simple plugin was developed for rails 2 but seems to work in rails 3 too.

http://github.com/Bertg/i18n_action_mailer

With it you can do the following:

def new_follower(user, follower)
  @follower = follower
  @user = user
  set_locale user.locale
  mail :to => @user.email, :subject => t(:new_follower_subject)
end

The subject and mail templates are then translated using the user's locale.

Answer 2

Here's an updated version that also supports the '.key' short-hand notation, so you don't have to spell out each key in its entirety.

http://github.com/larspind/i18n_action_mailer