Formatting the email address fields with Bamboo

When you create an email with Bamboo and deliver it:

 email = new_email(
      to: "chris@example.com",
      from: "vitamin.bot@example.com",
      subject: "Reminder",
      text_body: "Take your vitamins"
    )
 |> Mailer.deliver_now()

The to field will not be what you expect it to be:

email.to
# {nil, "chris@example.com"}

This is the normalized format for a to field. The first element in the tuple is the name of the recipient.

Bamboo allows you to format this field yourself with protocols.

defimpl Bamboo.Formatter, for: Person do
  def format_email_address(person, _opts) do
    {person.nickname, person.email}
  end
end

And now if I send an email with Person in the to field:

person = %Person{
    nickname: "shorty", 
  email: "chris@example.com"
}

email = new_email(
      to: person,
      from: "vitamin.bot@example.com",
      subject: "Reminder",
      text_body: "Take your vitamins"
    )
|> Mailer.deliver_now()

Then the to field gets formatted with our protocol.

email.to
# {"shorty", "chris@example.com"}

Read more about the Bamboo Formatter here.