MailTime

"Mail-Time" is a micro-service package for mail queue, with Server and Client APIs. Build on top of the nodemailer package.

Every MailTime instance can get type configured as Server or Client.

The main difference between Server and Client type is that the Server handles the queue and sends email. While the Client only adds emails into the queue.

ToC

• How it works?
  • With single SMTP
  • With multiple SMTP
  • As Micro-Service
• Features
• Installation
• Meteor.js usage
• Usage example
• API
  • Constructor
  • .send()
  • Default Template
• Custom Templates
• ~92% tests coverage

Main features:

• 👨‍🔬 ~92% tests coverage;
• 📦 Two simple dependencies, written from scratch for top performance;
• 🏢 Synchronize email queue across multiple servers;
• 💪 Bulletproof design, built-in retries.

How does it work?

Redundant solution for email transmission.

Single point of failure

Issue - classic solution with a single point of failure:

|----------------|         |------|         |------------------|
|  Other mailer  | ------> | SMTP | ------> |  ^_^ Happy user  |
|----------------|         |------|         |------------------|

The scheme above will work as long as SMTP service is available
or connection between your server and SMPT is up. Once network
failure occurs or SMTP service is down - users won't be happy

|----------------|  \ /    |------|         |------------------|
|  Other mailer  | --X---> | SMTP | ------> | 0_o Disappointed |
|----------------|  / \    |------|         |------------------|
                     ^- email lost in vain

Single SMTP solution may work in case of network or other failures
As long as MailTime has not received confirmation what email is sent
it will keep the letter in the queue and retry to send it again

|----------------|    /    |------|         |------------------|
|   Mail Time    | --X---> | SMTP | ------> |  ^_^ Happy user  |
|---^------------|  /      |------|         |------^-----------|
     \-------------/ ^- We will try later         /
      \- put it back into queue                  /
       \----------Once connection is back ------/

Multiple SMTP providers

Backup scheme with multiple SMTP providers

                           |--------|
                     /--X--| SMTP 1 |
                    /   ^  |--------|
                   /    \--- Retry with next provider
|----------------|/        |--------|         |------------------|
|   Mail Time    | ---X--> | SMTP 2 |      /->|  ^_^ Happy user  |
|----------------|\   ^    |--------|     /   |------------------|
                   \  \--- Retry         /
                    \      |--------|   /
                     \---->| SMTP 3 |--/
                           |--------|

Cluster issue

It is common to create a "Cluster" of servers to balance the load and add a durability layer for horizontal scaling of quickly growing applications.

Most modern application has scheduled or recurring emails. For example, once a day — with recent news and updates. It won't be an issue with a single server setup — the server would send emails at a daily interval via timer or CRON. While in "Cluster" implementation — each server will attempt to send the same email. In such cases, users will receive multiple emails with the same content. We built MailTime to address this and other similar issues.

Here is how this issue is solved by using MailTime:

|===================THE=CLUSTER===================| |=QUEUE=| |===Mail=Time===|
| |----------|     |----------|     |----------|  | |       | |=Micro-service=|   |--------|
| |   App    |     |   App    |     |   App    |  | |       | |               |-->| SMTP 1 |------\
| | Server 1 |     | Server 2 |     | Server 3 |  | |    <--------            |   |--------|       \
| |-----\----|     |----\-----|     |----\-----|  | |    -------->            |                |-------------|
|        \---------------\----------------\---------->      | |               |   |--------|   |     ^_^     |
| Each of the "App Server" or "Cluster Node"      | |       | |               |-->| SMTP 2 |-->| Happy users |
| runs Mail Time as a Client which only puts      | |       | |               |   |--------|   |-------------|
| emails into the queue. Aside to "App Servers"   | |       | |               |                    /
| We suggest running Mail Time as a Micro-service | |       | |               |   |--------|      /
| which will be responsible for making sure queue | |       | |               |-->| SMTP 3 |-----/
| has no duplicates and to actually send emails   | |       | |               |   |--------|
|=================================================| |=======| |===============|

Features

• Queue - Managed via MongoDB, will survive server reboots and failures
• Support for multiple server setups - "Cluster", Phusion Passenger instances, Load Balanced solutions, etc.
• Emails concatenation by addressee email - Reduce amount of sent emails to a single user with concatenation, and avoid mistakenly doubled emails
• When concatenation is enabled - Same emails won't be sent twice, if for any reason, due to bad logic or application failure emails are sent twice or more times - this is solution to solve this annoying behavior
• Balancing for multiple nodemailer's transports, two modes - backup and balancing. This is the most useful feature — allowing to reduce the cost of SMTP services and add extra layer of durability. If one transport failing to send an email mail-time will switch to the next one
• Sending retries for network and other failures
• Templating support with Mustache-like placeholders

Installation

To implement Server functionality — as a first step install nodemailer, although this package meant to be used with nodemailer, it's not added as the dependency, as nodemailer not needed by Client, and you're free to choose nodemailer's version to fit your project needs:

npm install --save nodemailer

Install MailTime package:

# for node@>=8.9.0
npm install --save mail-time

# for node@<8.9.0
npm install --save mail-time@=0.1.7

Basic usage

Require package:

const MailTime = require('mail-time');

Create nodemailer's transports (see nodemailer docs):

const transports = [];
const nodemailer = require('nodemailer');

// Use DIRECT transport
// and enable sending email from localhost
// install "nodemailer-direct-transport" NPM package:
const directTransport = require('nodemailer-direct-transport');
const directTransportOpts = {
  pool: false,
  direct: true,
  name: 'mail.example.com',
  from: '[email protected]',
};
transports.push(nodemailer.createTransport(directTransport(directTransportOpts)));
// IMPORTANT: Add `.options` to a newly created transport,
// this is necessary to make sure options are available to MailTime package:
transports[0].options = directTransportOpts;

// Private SMTP
transports.push(nodemailer.createTransport({
  host: 'smtp.example.com',
  from: '[email protected]',
  auth: {
    user: 'no-reply',
    pass: 'xxx'
  },
}));

// Google Apps SMTP
transports.push(nodemailer.createTransport({
  host: 'smtp.gmail.com',
  from: '[email protected]',
  auth: {
    user: '[email protected]',
    pass: 'xxx'
  },
}));

// Mailing service (SparkPost as example)
transports.push(nodemailer.createTransport({
  host: 'smtp.sparkpostmail.com',
  port: 587,
  from: '[email protected]',
  auth: {
    user: 'SMTP_Injection',
    pass: 'xxx'
  },
}));

As the next step initiate mail-time in the Server mode, it will be able to send and add emails to the queue. Connecting to a MongoDB before initiating new MailTime instance:

const MailTime = require('mail-time');
const MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;

const dbName = 'databaseName';

// Use MONGO_URL environment variable to store connection string to MongoDB
// example: "MONGO_URL=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/myapp node mail-micro-service.js"
MongoClient.connect(process.env.MONGO_URL, (error, client) => {
  const db = client.db(dbName);

  const mailQueue = new MailTime({
    db, // MongoDB
    type: 'server',
    strategy: 'balancer', // Transports will be used in round robin chain
    transports,
    from(transport) {
      // To pass spam-filters `from` field should be correctly set
      // for each transport, check `transport` object for more options
      return `"Awesome App" <${transport.options.from}>`;
    },
    concatEmails: true, // Concatenate emails to the same addressee
    concatDelimiter: '<h1>{{{subject}}}</h1>', // Start each concatenated email with it's own subject
    template: MailTime.Template // Use default template
  });
});

Only one MailTime Server instance required to send email. In the other parts of an app (like UI units or in sub-apps) use mail-time in the Client mode to add emails to queue:

const MailTime = require('mail-time');
const MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;

const dbName = 'databaseName';

MongoClient.connect(process.env.MONGO_URL, (error, client) => {
  const db = client.db(dbName);

  const mailQueue = new MailTime({
    db,
    type: 'client',
    strategy: 'balancer', // Transports will be used in round robin chain
    concatEmails: true // Concatenate emails to the same address
  });
});

Send email example:

mailQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  subject: 'You\'ve got an email!',
  text: 'Plain text message',
  html: '<h1>HTML</h1><p>Styled message</p>'
});

Two MailTime instances usage example

Create two MailTime instances with different settings.

// CREATE mailQueue FOR NON-URGENT EMAILS WHICH IS OKAY TO CONCATENATE
const mailQueue = new MailTime({
  db: db,
  interval: 35,
  strategy: 'backup',
  failsToNext: 1,
  concatEmails: true,
  concatThrottling: 16,
  zombieTime: 120000
});

// CREATE mailInstantQueue FOR TRANSACTIONAL EMAILS AND ALERTS
const mailInstantQueue = new MailTime({
  db: db,
  prefix: 'instant',
  interval: 2,
  strategy: 'backup',
  failsToNext: 1,
  concatEmails: false,
  zombieTime: 20000
});

mailQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  subject: 'You\'ve got an email!',
  text: 'Plain text message',
  html: '<h1>HTML</h1><p>Styled message</p>'
});

mailInstantQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  subject: 'Sign in request',
  text: 'Your OTP login code: xxxx:',
  html: '<h1>Code:</h1><code>XXXX</code>'
});

Passing variables to the template

All options passed to the .sendMail() method is available inside text, html, and global templates

const templates = {
  global: '<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>{{subject}}</title></head><body>{{{html}}}<footer>Message sent to @{{username}} user ({{to}})</footer></body></html>',
  signInCode: {
    text: 'Hello @{{username}}! Here\'s your login code: {{code}}',
    html: `<h1>Sign-in request</h1><p>Hello @{{username}}! <p>Copy your login code below:</p> <pre><code>{{code}}</code></pre>`
  }
};

const mailQueue = new MailTime({
  db: db,
  template: templates.global
});

mailQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  subject: 'Sign-in request',
  username: 'johndoe',
  code: 'XXXXX-YY',
  text: templates.signInCode.text,
  html: templates.signInCode.html
});

API

All available constructor options and .sendMail() method API overview

new MailTime(opts) constructor

• opts {Object} - Configuration object
• opts.db {Db} - [Required] Mongo's Db instance. For example returned in callback of MongoClient.connect()
• opts.type {String} - [Optional] client or server, default - server
• opts.from {Function} - [Optional] A function which returns String of from field, format: "MyApp" <[email protected]>
• opts.transports {Array} - [Optional] An array of nodemailer's transports, returned from nodemailer.createTransport({})
• opts.strategy {String} - [Optional] backup or balancer, default - backup. If set to backup, first transport will be used unless failed to send failsToNext times. If set to balancer - transports will be used equally in round robin chain
• opts.failsToNext {Number} - [Optional] After how many failed "send attempts" switch to next transport, applied only for backup strategy, default - 4
• opts.prefix {String} - [Optional] Use unique prefixes to create multiple MailTime instances on same MongoDB
• opts.maxTries {Number} - [Optional] How many times resend failed emails, default - 60
• opts.interval {Number} - [Optional] Interval in seconds between send re-tries, default - 60
• opts.zombieTime {Number} - [Optional] Time in milliseconds, after this period - pending email will be interpreted as "zombie". This parameter allows to rescue pending email from "zombie mode" in case when: server was rebooted, exception during runtime was thrown, or caused by bad logic, default - 32786. This option is used by package itself and passed directly to JoSk package
• opts.keepHistory {Boolean} - [Optional] By default sent emails not stored in the database. Set { keepHistory: true } to keep queue task as it is in the database, default - false
• opts.concatEmails {Boolean} - [Optional] Concatenate email by to field, default - false
• opts.concatSubject {String} - [Optional] Email subject used in concatenated email, default - Multiple notifications
• opts.concatDelimiter {String} - [Optional] HTML or plain string delimiter used between concatenated email, default - <hr>
• opts.concatThrottling {Number} - [Optional] Time in seconds while emails are waiting to be concatenated, default - 60
• opts.revolvingInterval {Number} - [Optional] Interval in milliseconds in between queue checks, default - 256. Recommended value — between opts.minRevolvingDelay and opts.maxRevolvingDelay
• opts.minRevolvingDelay {Number} - [Optional] Minimum revolving delay — the minimum delay between tasks executions in milliseconds, default - 64. This option is passed directly to JoSk package
• opts.maxRevolvingDelay {Number} - [Optional] Maximum revolving delay — the maximum delay between tasks executions in milliseconds, default - 256. This option is passed directly to JoSk package
• opts.template {String} - [Optional] Mustache-like template, default - {{{html}}}, all options passed to sendMail is available in Template, like to, subject, text, html or any other custom option. Use {{opt}} for string placeholders and {{{opt}}} for html placeholders

sendMail(opts [, callback])

• Alias - send()
• opts {Object} - Configuration object
• opts.sendAt {Date} - When email should be sent, default - new Date() use with caution on multi-server setup at different location with the different time-zones
• opts.template - Email specific template, this will override default template passed to MailTime constructor
• opts.concatSubject - Email specific concatenation subject, this will override default concatenation subject passed to MailTime constructor
• opts[key] {Mix} - Other custom and NodeMailer specific options, like text, html and to, learn more here. Note attachments should work only via path, and file must exists on all micro-services servers
• callback {Function} - Callback called after the email was sent or failed to be sent. Do not use on multi-server setup

static MailTime.Template

Simple and bulletproof HTML template, see its source. Usage example:

const MailTime = require('mail-time');
// Make it default
const mailQueue = new MailTime({
  db: db, // MongoDB
  /* .. */
  template: MailTime.Template
});

// For single letter
mailQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  /* .. */
  template: MailTime.Template
});

Template Example

Pass custom template via template property to .sendMail() method

mailQueue.sendMail({
  to: '[email protected]',
  userName: 'Mike',
  subject: 'Sign up confirmation',
  text: 'Hello {{userName}}, \r\n Thank you for registration \r\n Your login: {{to}}',
  html: '<div style="text-align: center"><h1>Hello {{userName}}</h1><p><ul><li>Thank you for registration</li><li>Your login: {{to}}</li></ul></p></div>',
  template: '<body>{{{html}}}</body>'
});

Testing

1. Clone this package
2. In Terminal (Console) go to directory where package is cloned
3. Then run:

Test NPM package:

# Before run tests make sure NODE_ENV === development
# Install NPM dependencies
npm install --save-dev

# Before run tests you need to have running MongoDB
DEBUG="true" EMAIL_DOMAIN="example.com" MONGO_URL="mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/npm-mail-time-test-001" npm test

# Be patient, tests are taking around 2 mins

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