passing django object context to sendgrid email via sendgrid-python API lib

Question

my django app has a view where accounts can send out newsletter emails to its contacts and subscribers using Sendgrid's API. sending is working with a plaintext email:

from sendgrid import SendGridAPIClient
from sendgrid.helpers.mail import (Mail, Subject, To, ReplyTo, SendAt, Content, From, CustomArg, Header)


def compose_email(request, send_to, *args, **kwargs):
    ...
    if request.method == 'POST':
            subject = request.POST.get('subject')
            from_name = request.POST.get('from_name')
            body = request.POST.get('body')
            reply_to = request.POST.get('reply_to')
            test_address = [request.POST.get('test_address')]
            # send test email
            if request.POST.get('do_test'):
                if form.is_valid():
                    message = AccountEmailMessage(account=account, subject=subject,
                                                from_name=from_name, destination=destination, body=body, reply_to=reply_to,
                                                is_draft=True, is_sent=False)
                    message.save()
                    email = Mail(
                        subject=subject,
                        [email protected],
                        html_content=body,
                        to_emails=test_address,
                    )
                    email.reply_to = ReplyTo(reply_to)

                    try:
                        sendgrid_client = SendGridAPIClient(settings.SENDGRID_API_KEY)
                        response = sendgrid_client.send(email)
                        message.sendgrid_id = response.headers['X-Message-Id']
                        message.save()
                    except Exception as e:
                        log.error(e)
                    messages.success(request, 'Test message has been successfully sent')
                else:
                    messages.error(request, 'Please, check for errors')

this works. but we want to render django object properties (model fields via template tags) in an html email template from Account (account) [assume it's just a vanilla obj req query account = Account.objects.get(id=selected_account) in the view], and I'm not clear what's the recommended docs approach.

the attempt:

    if request.method == 'POST':
        subject = request.POST.get('subject')
        from_name = request.POST.get('from_name')
        body = request.POST.get('body')
        reply_to = request.POST.get('reply_to')
        if request.POST.get('send'):
                if form.is_valid():
                    message = AccountEmailMessage(account=account, subject=subject,
                                                from_name=from_name, destination=destination, body=body, reply_to=reply_to,
                                                is_draft=False, is_sent=True)
                    message.save()

                    rendered = render_to_string('email/newsletter.html', {
                      'account': account,
                      'protocol': settings.DEFAULT_PROTOCOL,
                      'domain': settings.DOMAIN,
                      'message_body': body
                    })

                    email = Mail(
                        subject=subject,
                        [email protected],
                        html_content=rendered,
                        to_emails=recipients,
                        mime_type='text/html'
                    )
                    email.reply_to = ReplyTo(reply_to)

                    try:
                        sendgrid_client = SendGridAPIClient(settings.SENDGRID_API_KEY)
                        response = sendgrid_client.send(email)
                        message.sendgrid_id = response.headers['X-Message-Id']
                        message.save()
                    except Exception as e:
                        log.error(e)

but on submit, this throws an err: NoReverseMatch: Reverse for 'account' not found. 'account' is not a valid view function or pattern name when I try to pass account as a kwarg to the context and render it as a string.

looking at the docs (https://github.com/sendgrid/sendgrid-python#use-cases) I see Mail() has a .dynamic_template_data property. that's very inefficient to process a large number of fields from the same obj, as well as attributes like image urls, and also requires use of legacy transactional templates (https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/sending-email/create-and-edit-legacy-transactional-templates/). I see Sendgrid has a Personalization obj (https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/personalizations/) - is that the recommended way to implement this?

What's in email/newsletter.html? Do you have any {% url %} tags? — Iain Shelvington

Chris B. Chris B. · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-31T01:58:31

thanks to Iain on further testing realized we had two issues:

was attempting to encode a url in the template via {% url %} tag, that threw the NoReverseMatch
mime_type='text/html' isn't a valid kwarg for Mail(), removed that as well.

after (1) and (2) everything's working properly, no need for personalization

passing django object context to sendgrid email via sendgrid-python API lib

1 Answers