This is a project that demostrates different use cases for Windows Azure cloud.
ActionMailer.Standalone package is used in order to send email messages from worker role which is a non-MVC project. This package enables usage of Razor templating engine for email content. Unfortunately, at the moment ActionMailer.Standalone specifically requires Razor engine of version 3.0.8, which makes it a bit messy when trying to install ActionMailer through NuGet (NuGet installs 3.2.0 by default).
The solution currently consists of three projects: web role project called Web which represents
the website, worker role project called BackgroundWorker which executes background tasks and finally
azure cloud service project called CloudService which ties the previous two together
and is neccessary to deploy the solution to Widows Azure.
Web role inserts messages into a job queue which is periodically checked by worker role. The role picks up a message, parses it and executes an applicable job. In this case an email job renders an email body from a template and sends it, but it's possible to create other types of jobs depending on your needs.
Role content folders are utilized to ensure that correct template paths are used. All the email
templates are copied to BackgroundWorker role content folder during solution build. This is achieved
with AfterBuild target in BackgroundWorker project file:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<MakeDir Directories="$(SolutionDir)CloudService\BackgroundWorkerContent\EmailTemplates" Condition="!Exists('$(SolutionDir)CloudService\BackgroundWorkerContent\EmailTemplates')" />
<ItemGroup>
<Templates Include="$(ProjectDir)EmailTemplates\*.*" />
</ItemGroup>
<Copy SourceFiles="@(Templates)" DestinationFolder="$(SolutionDir)CloudService\BackgroundWorkerContent\EmailTemplates" />
</Target>The CloudService project file has been manually edited to include all the files from BackgroundWorker
role content folder:
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="BackgroundWorkerContent\EmailTemplates\*.*" />
</ItemGroup>After a successful execution emails are rendered into your C:\Temp folder.
- Investigate usage of (strongly typed) Html helpers in email templates
- Remove the dependency on the specific Razor Engine version (contribute to ActionMailer project)
- Figure out job scheduling with Quartz.NET