Sending emails is a significant feature in Apereo CAS, whether for user registration, password reset links, multifactor tokens, or other purposes. CAS supports a large number of email providers, some of which use the default JavaMail API and SMTP. Then there are more advanced options like Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, and Mailjet that might require a dedicated and nuanced integration path.
In this post, you’ll understand the email-sending capabilities available in Apereo CAS and be equipped to choose the best solution for your needs. Our starting position is as follows:
7.1.x21The JavaMail API provides a standard way to send emails from Java applications, and it’s seamlessly integrated with Apereo CAS via Spring Boot to make email sending straightforward and efficient. At a minimum, you will need to set up a few properties, such as the SMTP server details, and CAS via Spring Boot simplifies the rest of the process with its auto-configuration capabilities, allowing you to focus on crafting your email content and handling various requirements like HTML formatting.
The set of configuration properties that Spring Boot offers to CAS usually match the following set:
spring.mail.host=smtp.server.org
spring.mail.port=587
spring.mail.username=<username>
spring.mail.password=<password>
# spring.mail.properties.mail.transport.protocol=smtp
# spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.starttls.enable=true
# spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.starttls.required=true
# spring.mail.properties.mail.smtp.auth=true
spring.mail.default-encoding=UTF-8
spring.mail.test-connection=false
spring.mail.test-connection property when set to true, would test the SMTP connection on application launch, which means if the connection fails, an error will be thrown and the CAS launch will fail.
This option generally works quite well for any email server or provider that is able to provide and support SMTP, which means it will be sufficient for most scenarios.
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cloud-based email-sending service designed to provide high deliverability and scalability. Integrating Amazon SES with Spring Boot allows you to leverage this service to send transactional and marketing emails.
CAS uses the AWS SDK for Java to configure Amazon SES and handle email sending tasks. With a few simple steps, including setting up your AWS credentials to configure the SES client, you can start sending emails through Amazon’s infrastructure.
Once you have included the right module in your CAS build, a very basic setup could mean the following settings:
cas.email-provider.ses.region=us-east-1
cas.email-provider.ses.credential-access-key=...
cas.email-provider.ses.credential-secret-key=...
SendGrid is a popular cloud-based email service known for its robust features and ease of use, making it an excellent choice for sending transactional and marketing emails. Integrating SendGrid with CAS allows you to take advantage of SendGrid’s email delivery platform. By incorporating the relevant library into your CAS project, you can quickly configure the necessary API keys and settings to start sending emails.
Just as before, once you have included the right module in your CAS build, a fundamental setup could mean the following settings:
spring.sendgrid.api-key=...
spring.sendgrid.endpoint=https://api.sendgrid.com/v3/mail/send
Mailjet is a comprehensive email service provider offering various features for sending transactional and marketing emails. Integrating Mailjet with CAS allows you to utilize its API for email delivery and analytics. By adding the required library to your CAS build, you can easily configure your API keys and set up the necessary properties to start sending emails.
Just as before, once you have included the right module in your CAS build, a fundamental setup could mean the following settings:
cas.email-provider.mailjet.api-key=...
cas.email-provider.mailjet.secret-key=...
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I hope this review was of some help to you and I am sure that both this post as well as the functionality it attempts to explain can be improved in any number of ways. Please feel free to engage and contribute as best as you can.
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