Send Emails with Razor Templating in ASP.NET Core

In this article, let’s see how to send an email with dynamically generated email content using Razor View (.cshtml) in ASP.NET Core

# Create new solution
dotnet new sln -n "EmailService"

# Create Razor Class Library
dotnet new razorclasslib --support-pages-and-views -n "EmailService.Templates"

# Create Web Api
dotnet new webapi -n "EmailService.Api" -minimal --no-openapi

# Add projects to solution
dotnet sln add EmailService.Templates/EmailService.Templates.csproj
dotnet sln add EmailService.Api/EmailService.Api.csproj

# Add RCL project as reference to Api project
cd EmailService.Api
dotnet add reference ../EmailService.Templates/EmailService.Templates.csproj

# Add following Nuget to Api project
dotnet add package FluentEmail.Core 
dotnet add package FluentEmail.Smtp 
dotnet add package Razor.Templating.Core

Final Project Structure

Create View Model

I’ve created the view model to be passed to the razor view in this path EmailService\EmailService.Templates\WelcomeEmail\WelcomeEmailModel.cs

namespace EmailService.Templates.WelcomeEmail;

public class WelcomeEmailModel
{
    public string Name { get; set; } = null!;
    public string Email { get; set; } = null!;
    public string CompanyName { get; set; } = null!;
    public string SenderName { get; set; } = null!;
}

Create Email Template (Razor View .cshtml)

Then, I created the following razor view file in this path EmailService.Templates\WelcomeEmail\WelcomeEmailTemplate.cshtml

Note: This template can be customized as per the needs.

@model EmailService.Templates.WelcomeEmail.WelcomeEmailModel

Hello, @Model.Name,

Welcome to @Model.CompanyName!

Here, It's much easier to do templating using the powerful Razor SDK with the help of Razor.Templating.Core nuget package.


Regards,
@Model.SenderName

Render Email Template and Send Email

using EmailService.Templates.WelcomeEmail;
using FluentEmail.Core;
using Razor.Templating.Core;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services
        .AddFluentEmail("fromemail@test.test")
        .AddSmtpSender("localhost", 25);

var app = builder.Build();

app.MapGet("/", async () =>
{
    // Create the View Model to be passed to the razor view
    var model = new WelcomeEmailModel
    {
        Name = "John",
        Email = "john@example.com",
        CompanyName = "Razor.Templating.Core",
        SenderName = "Soundar"
    };
    
    // Generate the HTML content from the Razor View file using Razor.Templating.Core library
    var body = await RazorTemplateEngine.RenderAsync("/WelcomeEmail/WelcomeEmailTemplate.cshtml", model);

    // Now, send the generated html content as body using FluentEmail library 
    var email = await Email
                        .From("soundaranbu@gmail.com", model.SenderName)
                        .To(model.Email, model.Name)
                        .Subject($"Welcome to {model.CompanyName}")
                        .Body(body)
                        .SendAsync();

    return "Email sent successfully";
});

app.Run();

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve seen how to render the HTML content from razor view using Razor.Templating.Core package and then send the generated HTML content using FluentEmail package.

Code for this article can be found here: RazorTemplating/examples/_RealWorldSamples/EmailService at master · soundaranbu/RazorTemplating (github.com)

Thanks for reading. Happy coding 🙂

Soundar Anbalagan

Software Enthusiast | Technical Lead | Technical Blogger | Full Stack .NET Developer | Author of Razor.Templating.Core NuGet package

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