## Django Debug Toolbar - Mail Panel
[](http://travis-ci.org/scuml/django-mail-panel)

Testing and debugging e-mail while developing a Django app has never been pleasant. Sending e-mail to a file-based backend requires a user to click through obtusely-named files and does not provide a way to preview rendered HTML. Sending e-mail to a valid mailbox incurs a delay as the message is processed though a mail server, and clutters a developer's inbox.
The mail panel attempts to address these problems by providing a way to preview emails within the browser using [django-debug-toolbar](https://github.com/jazzband/django-debug-toolbar).
This mail panel is released under the Apache license. If you like it, please consider contributing!
Special thanks to @ShawnMilo for the code review.
Installation
============
To install the mail panel, first install this package with `pip install django-mail-panel`. Then add the `mail_panel` app after `debug_toolbar`to the `INSTALLED_APPS` setting:
```python
INSTALLED_APPS = (
...
'debug_toolbar',
'mail_panel',
)
```
and add the panel `DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS`:
```python
DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS = (
...
'mail_panel.panels.MailToolbarPanel',
)
```
Collect static and you'll be good to go.
```bash
./manage.py collectstatic
```
Configuration
=============
After installation, you now need to redirect mail to the mail toolbar. Change your email backend to the following:
```python
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'mail_panel.backend.MailToolbarBackend'
```
**Important:** This plugin uses Django's cache backend to store messages. If you are using `DummyCache`, the mail panel will use a local memory cache, and will reset messages when the server is restarted.
**[Optional]**
By default, mail toolbar stores messages for one day before removing them from cache. You can change this with the following setting:
```python
MAIL_TOOLBAR_TTL = 86400 # 1 Day
```
**[Optional]**
If you use the `DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS` to custom order your panels:
```python
DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PANELS = [
"debug_toolbar.panels.history.HistoryPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.versions.VersionsPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.timer.TimerPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.settings.SettingsPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.headers.HeadersPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.request.RequestPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.sql.SQLPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.staticfiles.StaticFilesPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.templates.TemplatesPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.cache.CachePanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.signals.SignalsPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.logging.LoggingPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.redirects.RedirectsPanel",
"debug_toolbar.panels.profiling.ProfilingPanel",
"mail_panel.panels.MailToolbarPanel", # reposition to desired location
]
```
Testing
=======
To preview emails sent from your test suite, add the email backend override to your tests with the following:
```python
from django.test.utils import override_settings
@override_settings(EMAIL_BACKEND='mail_panel.backend.MailToolbarBackend')
def test_send_email(self):
# your code here
```
The backend works similarly to the standard email backend and code should not need to be reworked when using the MailToolbarBackend.
```python
from django.core import mail
original_outbox = len(mail.outbox)
# Send mail ...
assert(len(mail.outbox) == original_outbox + 1)
```
Shameless Plugs
=======
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