The MailTask

The following parameters must be provided:

• server: the SMTP server URI
• from: you@yourhost.com
• to: friend@mail.com
• cc: other-friends@mail.com
• subject: Hello World!
• body: How are you?

Getting the mail data from an XML source

Additionally, you can pass a uri parameter to the MailTask:

• uri: the URI to get the XML file from

If this parameter is present, the task tries to fetch an XML document from the URI. If the parameter uri starts with a http:// or ftp:// prefix, the absolute URI is used. If not, the URI is interpreted as relative to the local publication.

A complete XML document could look like this:

<mail:mail xmlns:mail="http://apache.org/cocoon/lenya/mail/1.0">
  <mail:server>mail.yourhost.com</mail:server>
  <mail:from>you@yourhost.com</mail:from>
  <mail:to>friend@mail.com</mail:to>
  <mail:cc>other-friends@mail.com</mail:cc>
  <mail:subject>Hello Friends!</mail:subject>
  <mail:body>How are you?</mail:body>
</mail:mail>

All child elements of <mail:mail> are optional. If the uri task parameter is provided, the XML document is fetched from the URI and the parameters are extracted.

Task parameters have a higher priority than elements of the document. This makes it possible to access one complete XML file from different MailTasks and override the recepient address or other values.

In tasks.xconf, a typical mail task looks like follows:

  <task id="send-newsletter" class="org.lenya.cms.mail.MailTask">
    <label>Send Newsletter</label>
    <parameter name="server" value="mail.example.com"/>
    <parameter name="from" value="info@example.com"/>
    <parameter name="to" value="newsletter-subscribers@example.com"/>
    <parameter name="uri" value="/authoring/newsletter/mail.xml"/>
  </task>

The actual newsletter is received from the URI that is interpreted relativly to the publication URI. The task can be invoked in a sitemap pipeline:

  <map:action name="task" src="org.lenya.cms.cocoon.acting.TaskAction"/>
  
  ...
  
  <map:match pattern="newsletter/send">
    <map:act type="task">
      <map:parameter name="task-id" value="send-newsletter"/>
      <map:redirect-to uri="report-success.html" session="true"/>
    </map:act>
    <map:redirect-to uri="report-failure.html" session="true"/>
  </map:match>