Sending email from simple Sinatra app using Pony

I am building my first portfolio page with Sinatra.

I have a 'textbook' contact page with a straight-forward form containing 'name', 'email' and 'content' fields. When someone submits the form, I want to recieve an email notification.

Pony claims that it can send email via simple 'one-line' of code. I have read the Pony documentation but it is not very detailed in how to set it up.

I don't know if I am not setting it up properly, the code is not right, Pony is not the best tool, or if my development environment is not allowing the mail to be sent.

The code below is supposed to be sending an email from the post method, it is then saving the data to a PostgreSQL database via the save_message method. The data is being persisted correctly.

#server.rb
require 'sinatra'
require 'pony'
require_relative 'model/methods'

get '/contact' do
  erb :contact
end

post '/thankyou' do
  unless params[:name] == '' || params[:email] == '' || params[:content] == ''
    Pony.options = {
      :subject => "Portfolio page: Message delivery from #{params[:name]}",
      :body => "#{params[:content]}",
      :via => :smtp,
      :via_options => {
        :address              => 'smtp.1and1.com',
        :port                 =>  '587',
        :enable_starttls_auto => true,
        :user_name            => ENV["USER_EMAIL_ADDRESS"],
        :password             => ENV["SMTP_PASSWORD"],
        :authentication       => :login,
        :domain               => 'nterrafranca.com'
        }
      }
    Pony.mail(:to => ENV["DESTINATION_EMAIL_ADDRESS"])
    save_message(params[:name], params[:email], params[:content])
  end
  redirect '/'
end

Solution

Pony needs to know how to send the email, not just who it's to, from, what the subject and body are, etc.

From the pony documentation, it will default to use sendmail, otherwise configures SMTP to use localhost. Depending on where this application is running, it's highly likely that sendmail is not available, and that there is no SMTP configured on localhost.

I've used Pony for several applications. Each one, I configure a "noreply@" email address for Pony to use to authenticate for SMTP, therefore using my own domain email (usually Google Apps, or even Gmail) for my SMTP connection. For example:

Pony.options = {
  :subject => "Some Subject",
  :body => "This is the body.",
  :via => :smtp,
  :via_options => {
    :address              => 'smtp.gmail.com',
    :port                 => '587',
    :enable_starttls_auto => true,
    :user_name            => 'noreply@cdubs-awesome-domain.com',
    :password             => ENV["SMTP_PASSWORD"],
    :authentication       => :plain, # :plain, :login, :cram_md5, no auth by default
    :domain               => "localhost.localdomain"
  }
}

In the case of a Sinatra app, I perform the exact above code (with the obvious substitutions) right before I call:

Pony.mail(:to => <some_email>)

I've configured Pony multiple times - comment if you still have issues and I'll be glad to help.