MailTracker

MailTracker will hook into all outgoing emails from Laravel and inject a tracking code into it. It will also store the rendered email in the database. There is also an interface to view sent emails.

NOTE: For Laravel < 5.3.23 you MUST use version 2.0 or earlier.

Upgrade from 2.0 or earlier

First, upgrade to version 2.1 by running:

$ composer require jdavidbakr/mail-tracker ~2.1

If you are updating from an earlier version, you will need to update the config file and run the new migrations. For best results, make a backup copy of config/mail-tracker.php and the views in resources/views/vendor/emailTrackingViews (if they exists) to restore any values you have customized, then delete that file and run

$ php artisan vendor:publish
$ php artisan migrate

Also note that the migration for the sent_emails_url_clicked table changed with version 2.1.13. The change is that the URL column is now a TEXT field to allow for longer URLs. If you have an old system you may want to manually change that column; there is no migration included to perform that update.

Install

Via Composer

$ composer require jdavidbakr/mail-tracker ~2.1

Add the following to the providers array in config/app.php:

jdavidbakr\MailTracker\MailTrackerServiceProvider::class,

Publish the config file and migration

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="jdavidbakr\MailTracker\MailTrackerServiceProvider"

Run the migration

$ php artisan migrate

Note: If you would like to use a different connection to store your models, you should update the mail-tracker.php config entry connection before running the migrations.

Usage

Once installed, all outgoing mail will be logged to the database. The following config options are available in config/mail-tracker.php:

• name: set your App Name.
• inject-pixel: set to true to inject a tracking pixel into all outgoing html emails.
• track-links: set to true to rewrite all anchor href links to include a tracking link. The link will take the user back to your website which will then redirect them to the final destination after logging the click.
• expire-days: How long in days that an email should be retained in your database. If you are sending a lot of mail, you probably want it to eventually expire. Set it to zero to never purge old emails from the database.
• route: The route information for the tracking URLs. Set the prefix and middlware as desired.
• admin-route: The route information for the admin. Set the prefix and middleware.
• admin-template: The params for the Admin Panel and Views. You can integrate your existing Admin Panel with the MailTracker admin panel.
• date-format: You can define the format to show dates in the Admin Panel.

If you do not wish to have an email tracked, then you can add the X-No-Track header to your message. Put any random string into this header to prevent the tracking from occurring. The header will be removed from the email prior to being sent.

\Mail::send('email.test', [], function ($message) {
    // ... other settings here
    $message->getHeaders()->addTextHeader('X-No-Track',Str::random(10));
});

Note on dev testing

Several people have reporting the tracking pixel not working while they were testing. What is happening with the tracking pixel is that the email client is connecting to your website to log the view. In order for this to happen, images have to be visible in the client, and the client has to be able to connect to your server.

When you are in a dev environment (i.e. using the .test domain with Valet, or another domain known only to your computer) you must have an email client on your computer. Further complicating this is the fact that Gmail and some other web-based email clients don't connect to the images directly, but instead connect via proxy. That proxy won't have a connection to your .test domain and therefore will not properly track emails. I always recommend using mailtrap.io for any development environment when you are sending emails. Not only does this solve the issue (mailtrap.io does not use a proxy service to forward images in the emails) but it also protects you from accidentally sending real emails from your test environment.

Events

When an email is sent, viewed, or a link is clicked, its tracking information is counted in the database using the jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Model\SentEmail model. You may want to do additional processing on these events, so an event is fired in these cases:

• jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\EmailSentEvent
• jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\ViewEmailEvent
• jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\LinkClickedEvent

If you are using the Amazon SNS notification system, an event is fired when you receive a permanent bounce. You may want to mark the email as bad or remove it from your database.

• jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\PermanentBouncedMessageEvent

To install an event listener, you will want to create a file like the following:

<?php

namespace App\Listeners;

use jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\ViewEmailEvent;

class EmailViewed
{
    /**
     * Create the event listener.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        //
    }

    /**
     * Handle the event.
     *
     * @param  ViewEmailEvent  $event
     * @return void
     */
    public function handle(ViewEmailEvent $event)
    {
        // Access the model using $event->sent_email...
    }
}

<?php

namespace App\Listeners;

use jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\PermanentBouncedMessageEvent;

class BouncedEmail
{
    /**
     * Create the event listener.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        //
    }

    /**
     * Handle the event.
     *
     * @param  PermanentBouncedMessageEvent  $event
     * @return void
     */
    public function handle(PermanentBouncedMessageEvent $event)
    {
        // Access the email address using $event->email_address...
    }
}

Then you must register the event in your \App\Providers\EventServiceProvider $listen array:

/**
 * The event listener mappings for the application.
 *
 * @var array
 */
protected $listen = [
    'jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\ViewEmailEvent' => [
        'App\Listeners\EmailViewed',
    ],
    'jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Events\PermanentBouncedMessageEvent' => [
        'App\Listeners\BouncedEmail',
    ],
];

Passing data to the event listeners

Often times you may need to link a sent email to another model. The best way to handle this is to add a header to your outgoing email that you can retrieve in your event listener. Here is an example:

/**
 * Send an email and do processing on a model with the email
 */
\Mail::send('email.test', [], function ($message) use($email, $subject, $name, $model) {
    $message->from('from@johndoe.com', 'From Name');
    $message->sender('sender@johndoe.com', 'Sender Name');
    $message->to($email, $name);
    $message->subject($subject);

    // Create a custom header that we can later retrieve
    $message->getHeaders()->addTextHeader('X-Model-ID',$model->id);
});

and then in your event listener:

public function handle(EmailSentEvent $event)
{
    $tracker = $event->sent_email;
    $model_id = $event->sent_email->getHeader('X-Model-ID');
    $model = Model::find($model_id);
    // Perform your tracking/linking tasks on $model knowing the SentEmail object
}

Note that the headers you are attaching to the email are actually going out with the message, so do not store any data that you wouldn't want to expose to your email recipients.

Exceptions

The following exceptions may be thrown. You may add them to your ignore list in your exception handler, or handle them as you wish.

• jdavidbakr\MailTracker\Exceptions\BadUrlLink - the base64 decode of the URL parameter failed to return a valid redirect link. This may happen if somehow the URL gets truncated or is forged.

Amazon SES features

If you use Amazon SES, you can add some additional information to your tracking. To set up the SES callbacks, first set up SES notifications under your domain in the SES control panel. Then subscribe to the topic by going to the admin panel of the notification topic and creating a subscription for the URL you copied from the admin page. The system should immediately respond to the subscription request. If you like, you can use multiple subscriptions (i.e. one for delivery, one for bounces). See above for events that are fired on a failed message. For added security, it is recommended to set the topic ARN into the mail-tracker config.

Views

When you do the php artisan vendor:publish simple views will add to your resources/views/vendor/emailTrakingViews and you can customize.

Admin Panel

MailTracker comes with a built-in administration area. The default configuration that is published with the package puts it behind the can:see-sent-emails middleware; you may create a gate for this rule or change it to use one of your own. You may also change the defaul prefix as well as disable the admin routes completely.

The route name is 'mailTracker_Index'. The standard admin panel route is located at /email-manager. You can use route names to include them into your existing admin menu. You can customize your route in the config file. You can see all sent emails, total opens, total urls clicks, show individuals emails and show the urls clicked details.

All views (email tamplates, panel) can be customized in resources/views/vendor/emailTrakingViews.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING and CONDUCT for details.

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email me@jdavidbaker.com instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• J David Baker
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.