Using Observer to send email from rails app

Question

I am trying to send an email from my app. The email gets sent when I don't use observer. When I use observer i get the following error :

undefined local variable or method ` UserMailer' for #<UserObserver:0x7f5730c07400>

Here's my UserMailer

class UserMailer < ActionMailer::Base
  default :from => "from@me.com"    
  def welcome_email(user)
    @user = user
    @url  = "website.com/home"
    mail(:to => user.email, :subject => "Welcome to My Awesome Site")
  end
end

The observer code

require "#{Rails.root}/app/mailers/user_mailer.rb" 

class UserObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
    observe :user

  def after_save(user)
     UserMailer.welcome_email(user).deliver
  end

end

Any help will be appreciated. I am a nuby to ruby on rails. TIA

Answer 1

Observers have been removed in rails 4.
Which means, even though you can still use them with a gem, they are a deprecated and you should not use them.

The main reason for it is that observers are making your application a mess to read for new developers.

I would suggest you to use services (take a look at this post, which mentions how you can refactor your AR models properly), and send your email in one of them.

Answer 2

Do you have the below line setup in your application.rb file?

config.active_record.observers = :user_observer