Getting started with Email Manager

This guide explains two ways to start using Email Manager: generating a new application with Email Manager already integrated, or integrating it by hand into an existing application.

Quick Start with Craft

The fastest way to try Email Manager is to generate a new application with Craft, the AppJars project generator. Craft produces a runnable Spring Boot and Vaadin project with Email Manager already integrated, so none of the manual integration steps are needed.

Open craft.appjars.com and select the Email Manager card in the Modules section. Other AppJars can be selected as well; Craft wires them together.
Adjust the Project and Appearance settings if needed, and click Download project.
Extract the downloaded archive and run docker compose up -d from the extracted folder. The first start takes a few minutes while the application image is built. To run the application with Maven instead, run mvn spring-boot:run.
Open http://localhost:8080; the Email Manager views are in the navigation drawer.

Sending email requires an SMTP server. Set the spring.mail.host, spring.mail.port, spring.mail.username and spring.mail.password properties, or the environment variables listed in the generated .env.example file: copy it to .env when the application runs with Docker Compose, or export the variables when it runs with Maven. The application starts without them, but emails cannot be delivered until they are set.

Craft also generates a scheduled job that sends the emails waiting in the queue. When Process Manager is selected as well, the queue is processed by a process that can be scheduled and triggered from the Processes view instead.

Unless User Manager or Issue Tracker is selected as well, the generated application has no login page and every view is accessible without signing in.

The Craft Project Generator page describes every option and the contents of the generated project. Continue with Testing the Application to try Email Manager.

Manual Integration

Prepare the Application

The following steps integrate Email Manager into an existing Spring Boot and Vaadin application. To follow them from a blank application, open Craft, leave every module unselected, and click Download project. Extract the archive, import it into your IDE of choice, and verify the application starts correctly by running the main class. A project generated by Craft already declares the AppJars repository, so the next step can be skipped.

Add the AppJars Repository

AppJars artifacts are published to the public AppJars Maven repository. Add it to your pom.xml so that Maven can resolve the AppJars dependencies:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>appjars</id>
        <name>AppJars Public Repository</name>
        <url>https://maven.appjars.com</url>
        <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Add the Dependencies

Given that it is a monolithic application, the following dependencies representing the three layers of the appjar must be added:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.appjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>appjars-email-manager-flow</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.appjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>appjars-email-manager-data-impl</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.appjars</groupId>
    <artifactId>appjars-email-manager-business-impl</artifactId>
</dependency>

After adding them, build the application to confirm that the dependencies are resolved correctly.

Configure the Router Layout

Inject the RouteConfigurer provided by Email Manager and configure the router layout in a @PostConstruct method so that the appjar views share the same layout as the rest of the application:

@Autowired
@Qualifier("EmailManagerRouteConfigurer")
RouteConfigurer routeConfigurer;

@PostConstruct
public void configure() {
    routeConfigurer.setViewsRouterLayout(MainLayout.class);
}

The import for RouteConfigurer is com.appjars.emailmanager.flow.util.RouteConfigurer.

Add the Email Manager view to the application's navigation menu. Insert the following snippet at the end of the method createNavigation() in MainLayout, before returning nav:

if (accessChecker.hasAccess(EmailCrudView.class)) {
    nav.addItem(new SideNavItem("Emails", EmailCrudView.class, LineAwesomeIcon.ENVELOPE_SOLID.create()));
}

The import for the view class is:

com.appjars.emailmanager.flow.view.EmailCrudView

EmailCrudView is annotated with @PermitAll, so the appjar makes it available to any authenticated user. The view does not filter emails by user: whoever opens it sees and manages every email. Restricting it to a particular role, such as ADMIN, is the responsibility of the host application's security configuration (for example, a User Manager access rule on its route). The accessChecker.hasAccess guard above then hides the Emails menu item from users who cannot open the view.

Configure Application Properties

Add the following properties to application.properties:

spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.generate-ddl=true

Email Manager sends messages through a mail server. Add the SMTP connection details:

spring.mail.host=<your-smtp-host>
spring.mail.port=587
spring.mail.username=<your-username>
spring.mail.password=<your-password>
spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.auth=true
spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.starttls.enable=true

Email Manager supports file attachments. By default it accepts up to five attachments per email, of at most 25 MB each, restricted to a list of common document, image and archive content types. All three bounds are configurable:

com.appjars.emailmanager.attachments.max-size=26214400
com.appjars.emailmanager.attachments.max-files=5
com.appjars.emailmanager.attachments.accepted-types=application/pdf,image/png,image/jpeg

Raise the servlet's own upload limits to at least the maximum attachment size, or the larger files are rejected before the appjar sees them:

spring.servlet.multipart.max-file-size=25MB
spring.servlet.multipart.max-request-size=25MB

Finally, add com.flowingcode and com.appjars to the list of whitelisted packages in application.properties:

vaadin.allowed-packages = com.vaadin,org.vaadin,dev.hilla,com.example.demo,com.flowingcode,com.appjars

Testing the Application

Start the application by running the main Spring Boot class. After it starts, log in with an administrator account and navigate to Emails in the menu.

Compose a new email by clicking the Create button, filling in the recipient address and subject, and optionally attaching files. Once sent, the email record remains visible in the list with its delivery status updated accordingly.