This blog is part of our Rails 6 series.
When using ActionMailer::Base#mail, if we want to display name and email address of the user in email, we can pass a string in format "John Smith" <john@example.com> in to, from or reply_to options.
Before Rails 6, we had to join name and email address using string interpolation as mentioned in Rails 5.2 Guides and shown below.
1 email_with_name = %("John Smith" <john@example.com>) 2 mail( 3 to: email_with_name, 4 subject: 'Hey Rails 5.2!' 5 )
Problem with string interpolation is it doesn't escape unexpected special characters like quotes(") in the name.
Here's an example.
Rails 5.2
1 2irb(main):001:0> %("John P Smith" <john@example.com>) 3=> "\"John P Smith\" <john@example.com>" 4 5irb(main):002:0> %('John "P" Smith' <john@example.com>) 6=> "'John \"P\" Smith' <john@example.com>" 7
Rails 6 adds ActionMailer::Base#email_address_with_name to join name and email address in the format "John Smith" <john@example.com> and take care of escaping special characters.
Rails 6.1.0.alpha
1 2irb(main):001:0> ActionMailer::Base.email_address_with_name("john@example.com", "John P Smith") 3=> "John P Smith <john@example.com>" 4 5irb(main):002:0> ActionMailer::Base.email_address_with_name("john@example.com", 'John "P" Smith') 6=> "\"John \\\"P\\\" Smith\" <john@example.com>" 7
1mail( 2to: email_address_with_name("john@example.com", "John Smith"), 3subject: 'Hey Rails 6!' 4)
Here's the relevant pull request for this change.