Is there a better way to generate HTML email in C# (for sending via System.Net.Mail), than using a Stringbuilder to do the following:
string userName = "John Doe";
StringBuilder mailBody = new StringBuilder();
mailBody.AppendFormat("<h1>Heading Here</h1>");
mailBody.AppendFormat("Dear {0}," userName);
mailBody.AppendFormat("<br />");
mailBody.AppendFormat("<p>First part of the email body goes here</p>");
and so on, and so forth?
Answer
You can use the MailDefinition class.
This is how you use it:
MailDefinition md = new MailDefinition();
md.From = "[email protected]";
md.IsBodyHtml = true;
md.Subject = "Test of MailDefinition";
ListDictionary replacements = new ListDictionary();
replacements.Add("{name}", "Martin");
replacements.Add("{country}", "Denmark");
string body = "<div>Hello {name} You're from {country}.</div>";
MailMessage msg = md.CreateMailMessage("[email protected]", replacements, body, new System.Web.UI.Control());
Also, I've written a blog post on how to generate HTML e-mail body in C# using templates using the MailDefinition class.