Kiran Krishnan

Posted on Jan 21, 2023 • Edited on Feb 22, 2023 • Originally published at kirandev.com

Sending Emails with React Email and Next.js

#nextjs #react #javascript #opensource

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create and send HTML emails with React Email and Next.js

Prerequisites

Getting Started

Let's start with a new Next.js project. You can use the Next.js CLI to create a new project.

npx create-next-app next-email --ts

Wait for the project to be created. Once the project is created, let's move into the project directory.

cd next-email

Create Email Template

We will use the React Email to create a new email template.

Let's install dependencies.

npm install react-email @react-email/html @react-email/text @react-email/section @react-email/container -E

Now, let's create a new email template using the React Email components. This is a simple React component that will be converted to HTML email template.

We will create a new file emails/WelcomeTemplate.tsx and add the following code.

import { Html } from "@react-email/html"
import { Text } from "@react-email/text"
import { Section } from "@react-email/section"
import { Container } from "@react-email/container"

export default function WelcomeEmail() {
  return (
    <Html>
      <Section style={main}>
        <Container style={container}>
          <Text style={heading}>Hi there!</Text>
          <Text style={paragraph}>Welcome to our app!</Text>
        </Container>
      </Section>
    </Html>
  )
}

// Styles for the email template
const main = {
  backgroundColor: "#ffffff",
}

const container = {
  margin: "0 auto",
  padding: "20px 0 48px",
  width: "580px",
}

const heading = {
  fontSize: "32px",
  lineHeight: "1.3",
  fontWeight: "700",
  color: "#484848",
}

const paragraph = {
  fontSize: "18px",
  lineHeight: "1.4",
  color: "#484848",
}

Preview Email Template

Add the following script in your package.json file.

{
  "scripts": {
    "preview-email": "email dev"
  }
}

Now, you can preview your email template by running the following command.

npm run preview-email

This will start a local server and open your email template in the browser.

Send Email with Nodemailer

Let's install Nodemailer.

npm install nodemailer

npm i --save-dev @types/nodemailer

Create a new helper file lib/email.ts and add the following code. This will take care of sending emails using Nodemailer and the SMTP server.

Find the source code on GitHub

import nodemailer from "nodemailer"

type EmailPayload = {
  to: string
  subject: string
  html: string
}

// Replace with your SMTP credentials
const smtpOptions = {
  host: process.env.SMTP_HOST || "smtp.mailtrap.io",
  port: parseInt(process.env.SMTP_PORT || "2525"),
  secure: false,
  auth: {
    user: process.env.SMTP_USER || "user",
    pass: process.env.SMTP_PASSWORD || "password",
  },
}

export const sendEmail = async (data: EmailPayload) => {
  const transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
    ...smtpOptions,
  })

  return await transporter.sendMail({
    from: process.env.SMTP_FROM_EMAIL,
    ...data,
  })
}

Make sure your .env file contains the following environment variables.

SMTP_HOST=
SMTP_PORT=
SMTP_USER=
SMTP_PASSWORD=
SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=

Now, let's create a new file pages/api/send-email.ts and add the following code.

import type { NextApiRequest, NextApiResponse } from "next"
import { render } from "@react-email/render"
import WelcomeTemplate from "../../emails/WelcomeTemplate"
import { sendEmail } from "../../lib/email"

export default async function handler(
  req: NextApiRequest,
  res: NextApiResponse
) {
  await sendEmail({
    to: "kiran@example.com",
    subject: "Welcome to NextAPI",
    html: render(WelcomeTemplate()),
  })

  return res.status(200).json({ message: "Email sent successfully" })
}

Now you can visit http://localhost:3000/api/send-email to send the email.

If you're planning to build a SaaS app, then you might be interested in NextAPI. NextAPI is a Next.js RESTful API Starter for building SaaS Apps. NextAPI can handle the heavy lifting for common SaaS features such as authentication, team management, invites, subscriptions, and more.