Templates

In the Extra Horizon cloud, you can create mail templates which the mail service can use to send well-formed emails. You can manage these templates with the Extra Horizon client as well.

For information regarding Templates and the Templates Service please refer to the Templates Service documentation.

Create a new template

To start with a new template, you can use the init command. This command will generate the files for a minimal email template for you to start out with.

exh templates init <template-name>

This command creates a new template folder named <template-name> in ./templates/. The folder contains:

• template.json

• body.hbs

After editing the template to your liking, you can use the exh templates sync command to upload your new template to your Extra Horizon cloud.

Arguments

--path

This optional argument is used to specify the path where the template directory should be created. By default, the ./templates/ directory will be used.

Synchronizing templates

This command provides the functionality to read a locally declared Templates and synchronize the contents with existing Templates.

exh templates sync

Arguments

--template

This argument is used to specify the path to the JSON file or the directory that contains a single template to be synced.

--path

This argument is used to specify a directory that contains template files/directories to be synced.

Template Files

Templates can be a single json file but in the case where you have multiple pieces of content you can also split the template up into multiple files and put those files in a folder. For example if you have an html file which you want to include in the template: it's easier to maintain if you put the html file separate instead of inlining it into a json file.

Single json file template

This is the easiest case. Everything is contained in the json file. The CLI will use the name of the file (minus the extension) as the template name.

welcome_email.json

{
  "description": "Email send to the user to welcome them",
  "inputs": {
    "first_name": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "subject": "Welcome to Extra Horizon",
    "body": "Dear {{@inputs.first_name}}, Welcome to Extra Horizon!"
  },
  "$schema": "https://swagger.extrahorizon.com/cli/1.13.0/config-json-schemas/Template.json"
}

To sync a single template file the --template argument can be supplied with the file name:

exh templates sync --template welcome_email.json

Folder template

If you prefer to split things up, you can put different parts of your template in separate files into a single folder. The name of the folder will be the name of the resulting template. A folder should contain a template.json. Any other file in the folder will be read as text and is added to the outputs property of the template.json file.

Example:

password_reset_email/template.json

{
  "description": "Email send to the user in the password reset flow",
  "inputs": {
    "first_name": { "type": "string" },
    "reset_hash": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "subject": "Your password reset"
  },
  "$schema": "https://swagger.extrahorizon.com/cli/1.13.0/config-json-schemas/Template.json"
}

password_reset_email/body.hbs

Dear {{@inputs.first_name}},

We are sending this message because you initiated a password reset.
You can use the following link to complete your password reset:

https://my-web-plaform.com/reset_password?hash={{@inputs.reset_hash}}

Was it not you who initiated resetting your password? Contact us as soon as possible!

Kind regards,
The team

Run the CLI to create the template:

exh templates sync --template password_reset_email

From those files, the CLI will build the following resulting template:

{
  "name": "password_reset_email",
  "description": "Email send to the user in the password reset flow",
  "inputs": {
    "first_name": { "type": "string" },
    "reset_hash": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "subject": "Your password reset",
    "body": "<The content of `password_reset_email/body.hbs`>"
  }
}

Syncing multiple templates

When you define multiple templates in a dedicated folder, you can sync them all at once. For instance, when placing the 2 examples from the earlier sections in a my-templates folder:

my-templates/welcome_mail.json
my-templates/password_reset_email/template.json
my-templates/password_reset_email/body.hbs

You can sync both templates with a single command by using the --path argument:

exh templates sync --path my-templates

Variables

Templates support CLI-level variables that are resolved when running exh templates sync. This allows you to reuse values and inject environment-specific configuration into your outputs before the template is uploaded to the cloud.

Variables are defined in a top-level variables property inside template.json. Variables can be referenced in the outputs in two ways: $VAR_NAME and ${VAR_NAME} . Both syntaxes are supported and behave identically.

Defining variables

variables-example.json

{
  "variables": {
    "COMPANY_NAME": "Extra Horizon",
    "SUPPORT_EMAIL": "[email protected]"
  },
  "outputs": {
    "subject": "Welcome to $COMPANY_NAME",
    "body": "If you have questions, contact us at ${SUPPORT_EMAIL}."
  }
}

Syncing the template with the CLI results in a template like this:

{
  "name": "variables-example",
  "outputs": {
    "subject": "Welcome to Extra Horizon",
    "body": "If you have questions, contact us at [email protected]."
  }
}

Using environment variables in variables

Instead of hardcoding values, you can reference environment variables inside the variables section.

This allows templates to adapt automatically to the environment in which the CLI is running (for example: dev, staging, production). Environment variables can be referenced in the variables in two ways: $ENV_VAR_NAME and ${ENV_VAR_NAME} . Both syntaxes are supported and behave identically.

environment-example.json

{
  "variables": {
    "HOST": "${TARGET_HOST}"
  },
  "inputs": {
    "reset_hash": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "link": "https://${HOST}/reset_password?hash={{@inputs.reset_hash}}"
  }
}

• The CLI reads the variables section.

• ${TARGET_HOST} is resolved using your local environment and put in the HOST variable.

• ${HOST} is replaced inside outputs.

• The template is synced with ouputs with the filled in HOST variable

When running something like:

export TARGET_HOST=staging.my-web-plaform.com
exh templates sync --template environment-example.json

Resulting in a template like:

{
  "name": "environment-example",
  "inputs": {
    "reset_hash": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "link": "https://staging.my-web-plaform.com/reset_password?hash={{@inputs.reset_hash}}"
  }
}

Extending templates

Once you've made a number of templates, you'll notice that there are a lot of common things between the different templates and you end up repeating the same thing. This makes management more cumbersome because a single change to those common things will affect multiple files and it's easy to make mistakes. Therefore the CLI supports extending of templates, which means that we can start to build hierarchies of templates.

Templates like, for example, base_mail and base_button_mail could be extended by other templates.

You can extend from a template by adding an extendsTemplate-property to your template.

Extending a template will search for @inputs.___ variables in the extendable template its outputs and will replace them with the extending templates outputs with the same name.

Example

A simplified template to extend from: (containing a first_name and message reference)

basic_template.json

{
  "description": "Basic message template with a greeting",
  "inputs": {
    "first_name": { "type": "string" },
    "message": { "type": "string" },
  },
  "outpus": {
    "body": "Dear {{@inputs.first_name}},\n\n{{@inputs.message}}\n\nKind regards,\nThe team"
  },
  "$schema": "https://swagger.extrahorizon.com/cli/1.13.0/config-json-schemas/Template.json"
}

A template extending the above template: (passing along its own input name to first_name and filling the message reference)

registration_message.json

{
  "extendsTemplate": "basic_template",
  "description": "Message meant to be used after registration",
  "inputs": {
    "name": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "first_name": "{{@inputs.name}}",
    "message": "We have successfully received your registration. You can now use our services."
  },
  "$schema": "https://swagger.extrahorizon.com/cli/1.13.0/config-json-schemas/Template.json"
}

Will result in the following template:

{
  "name": "registration_message",
  "description": "Message meant to be used after registration",
  "inputs": {
    "name": { "type": "string" }
  },
  "outputs": {
    "body": "Dear {{@inputs.name}},\n\nWe have successfully received your registration. You can now use our services.\n\nKind regards,\nThe team"
  }
}

Note

• The templates from which you extend, do not necessarily need to be in your folder. If the CLI didn't find the template in the specified sync folder, it will query the Extra Horizon cloud. If the template cannot be found there either, an error will be thrown.

• The sync command will either create or update a template (if the name already exists). It will never delete a template.

Listing templates

List the id, name and the description of all templates:

exh templates list

To get more information than the three properties listed use the get command on a single template.

Get a single template

To get the full template by name

exh templates get --name=mytemplate

Or by id

exh templates get --id=620d0eaacff47e000714b13d

Arguments

--name

This argument is used to specify the name of the template to retrieve

--id

This argument is used to specify the id of the template to retrieve

Deleting templates

Any template can be deleted by using the delete command

exh templates delete --name=mytemplate

Or by id

exh templates delete --id=620d0eaacff47e000714b13d

Arguments

--name

This argument is used to specify the name of the template to delete.

--id

This argument is used to specify the id of the template to delete.