Hi everyone! This week I’m going to talk about a speed bump I encountered while adding a Gmail account to my Rail apps’ action mailer. Setting up the mailer is straightforward. In a nutshell, you need to configure the mailer to use a Gmail account to send out emails. To do that, you have to create a custom security measure using a two-step password that tells Gmail; the app is allowed to send an email. Gmail gives you an app password that replacing the stand email login password that you will set as a production configuration variable to your Rails app.
Since we don’t want the Gmail credentials visible on GitHub but need to the file to be usable, we need to create a secret configuration that handles the configuration variables. In development, I used the dotenv gem, and it worked like magic, but when I moved to production, the mailer stopped working. I tried EVERYTHING. I tried resetting the app password. I checked my production file to make sure I formatted the default options correctly, and nothing worked. I spend the better part of four days looking for an answer, and I couldn’t find anything.
I still can’t explain why and haven’t found a good explanation on Google yet.
One thing I did see what another gem called Figaro, so I figured I would check it out. When I used figaro, it just worked. I’m sure there is a way to get dotenv to work, but figaro was much easier, in my humble opinion. So here a quick walkthrough of how to add figaro to your project.
Add the figaro gem to your Gem file and bundle install to install it.
gem 'figaro'
OR install in the gem through your terminal.
bundle exec figaro install
This command creates a new file in your directory’s configuration folder, called application.yml. The gem should also add that file into your .gitignore file.
DOUBLE CHECK before moving forward.
Inside of application.yml is a commented-out template for adding configuration variables. Just add the keys of GMAIL_USERNAME and GMAIL_PASSOWRD with their respective values under the production: key.
production:
GMAIL_USERNAME: "yourusername@gmail.com"
GMAIL_PASSWORD: "yourgmailapppassword42"
If you are hosting on Heroku, you need to set the values of your configuration through their CLI as well. Figaro as a built-in command just for Heroku to accomplish this, and it’s beautiful. In the terminal run:
figaro heroku:set -e production
That’s it!
You are ready to go. Once you commit to GitHub, TRIPLE CHECK and make sure application.yml was picked up by .gitignore. You’ll know it’s right if you dont see it. Then push your app to your host service.
I hope this helps you host a fantastic and secure application!
To the first person reading this that can figure out the reference I allude to in the title; I will donate $20 to a charity of your choice. Reach out to me on LinkedIn.
That’s all for this week!
Time to Say Goodbye