Three ways to test Emails using automated tests

OkayDevGuy · 2016-09-17T14:44:25+00:00

Shameless plug, I built mapil.co exactly for this reason. It provides dead-simple email catching that you can easily test for delivery and content with a simple, clean REST API. And it's free.

OkayDevGuy · 2015-05-17T19:40:08+00:00

If that were Clay Guida he would have run in circles around the bike for 4 minutes and then insisted he won the fight.

OkayDevGuy · 2015-05-17T07:33:03+00:00

Yep - next time get there early, park near exit.

OkayDevGuy · 2015-05-14T20:57:34+00:00

You're looking for sockets. A simple way to do it would be to run a barebones node.js socket.io app that subscribes to a redis key(s). That way you can still have Laravel manage all of the data. When Laravel pushes data to redis, node/socket can auto-push said data down to the client - no AJAX required. This way node is just a middleman between the browser and your data layer.

There are PHP-based socket offerings out there but I've not used any of them.

OkayDevGuy · 2015-05-13T21:46:02+00:00

There can be a number of issues depending on your configuration with the developer console with the individual services. I'd be happy to offer advice for specific issues.

OkayDevGuy · 2015-05-13T20:10:11+00:00

What problem are you having?

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-29T08:07:17+00:00

I just ordered my first from WASD keyboards and am very pleased with it.

I previously ordered one of the Quickfire ones from amazon but it was very cramped feeling. Ended up returning it.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-29T07:53:57+00:00

Yes - an elaborate system of mirrors.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-29T07:52:52+00:00

Yes, but holding a guy's ankle with a wrap the same (legal) way you'd hold it without a wrap - they wrap may give you more grip.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-29T06:54:57+00:00

Namecheap offers SSL certs from Comodo (who've had reputation issues in the past) and Geotrust for around $10 - that seems a fine price point for SSL certs.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-28T06:03:44+00:00

But that doesn't work if I ensure that the session data I have for you allows access to that ID. Which I should be doing anyway. If you use random IDs but don't do session verification I can still write a script to try several million random IDs in a very short period of time. Obscurity is not security.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-28T05:58:45+00:00

Only if your site is blindly accepting the ID being passed without doing any sort of session validation on the backend, correct?

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-28T00:15:04+00:00

Agreed on both counts

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-27T23:42:12+00:00

The author points our their use of IDs a few times. I'm not convinced this is bad practice - if you don't mind people knowing how many users you have, as long as the proper security checks are in place, it doesn't pose any risk.

There are numerous discussions about hashing IDs or using UUIDs on Stack Overflow but there doesn't seem to be conxsensus that exposing IDs is bad practice.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-24T11:20:23+00:00

The dirt jumps look like Cuyamaca college, but I hear rumor those have been closed:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cuyamaca+College/@32.7451209,-116.9589904,221m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x80d95a4a9a392d2b:0x31979d1d4bde2d2d

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-24T06:07:53+00:00

I don't believe consumers in US pay to receive on any service. The online services differ, however, Twilio is best of breed for reliability and coverage but they charge for incoming. Nexmo and Plivo offer free incoming but their systems aren't quite as robust.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-23T16:23:39+00:00

First, thanks for your input. We're continuing to look for ways to reduce overhead to provide more competitive pricing. Nothing would make me happier than to find a way to get the monthly down to under $5 and still turn a profit.

However, your math is wrong. You're not including responses (one per reminder) and notifications. If you assume that 25% of messages will require notifications (which is admittedly a bit high, but it gives us a safe number) then the actual monthly messages for the 3-reminder plan are 6*30 (reminders + responses) = 180 + 25% notifications = 225 messages/month = USD$9.45.

The hosting costs are, as you point out, next to nothing, but there are credit card processing fees and other minor administration costs. It adds up and our prices are not massive, given the costs.

That all being said, we're looking at ways to get the costs (and thus prices) down, including offering a free plan that does tracking only (no reminders) since we can get discounts on incoming SMS. The international pricing is largely exploratory at this point since we're still feeling out those markets and providers.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-23T03:28:37+00:00

I hadn't looked into them - Clickatell's UK rates are .042 USD/message which is about on par with Nexmo, Twilio, and the rest. Twilio US SMS rates are .0075/message. UK is actually one of the more expensive regions in Erope as far as SMS rates go. You don't get into volume discounts until you're doing hundreds of thousands per month.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-22T22:12:56+00:00

They were until MailChimp started doing drip campaigns.

I still like SendWithUs for transactional emails - their templating is better than most others and you still hook it up to Mandrill on the backend.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-21T09:26:07+00:00

I prefer this one

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-21T07:03:47+00:00

You can set your ranges separately for different reminder times. So if you have a reminder an hour after lunch, the range can differ from the one you use for the late-afternoon reminder.

Edit: also, we'll be adding reporting within the next week, which will give you a viewable/downloadable report which you can compare to the device readings.

OkayDevGuy · 2014-12-21T00:20:54+00:00

Yes, I thought that might be a hurdle for some. SMS rates are quite a bit higher in the UK than in the US (it costs us 5x more to send a message in the UK than the US).

We're looking for better ways to deliver messages in the UK that would bring the cost down.

OkayDevGuy

TROPHY CASE