Module: Email Builder

4 of 13 Pages

Configure the Starter Kit and Email Builder

✖
Copy to clipboard

Register the MJML Starter Kit template

By default, the Starter Kit does not register its included page template. This allows you to specify which of your content types should have access to it, or easily leave it out.

Create a new file in the ~/Features/Shared/EmailBuilder folder of the TrainingGuides.Web project called StarterKitComponentRegister.cs

C#
StarterKitComponentRegister.cs 

using Kentico.EmailBuilder.Web.Mvc;
using Kentico.Xperience.Mjml.StarterKit.Rcl.Templates;
using TrainingGuides;

[assembly: RegisterEmailTemplate(
    identifier: EmailBuilderStarterKitTemplate.IDENTIFIER,
    name: "MJML Starter Kit template",
    componentType: typeof(EmailBuilderStarterKitTemplate),
    // Enter the code names of all email content types where you wish to use Email Builder
    ContentTypeNames = [BasicEmail.CONTENT_TYPE_NAME])]

The Training guides project includes other email content types, but for this example, we’ll only enable the BasicEmail type.

In your own projects, you can include as many content types as you want in the ContentTypeNames collection.

Enable Email Builder

If you run your project now, you’ll notice that you can’t use the MJML Starter Kit template for emails, even though you just registered it. This is because you haven’t yet enabled Email Builder.

During startup, we need to enable Email Builder and configure its options. We must specify which content types should use Email Builder at startup. You can also override the default section used in Editable areas on email templates.

Let’s enable Email marketing and Email Builder for the Basic email content type and set the default section to the Full-width section from the Starter Kit.

C#
Program.cs 

...
using Kentico.EmailBuilder.Web.Mvc;
using Kentico.Xperience.Mjml;
...

builder.Services.AddKentico(async features =>
{
    ...
    features.UseEmailMarketing();
    features.UseEmailBuilder();
});
...
builder.Services.Configure<EmailBuilderOptions>(options =>
{
    options.AllowedEmailContentTypeNames = [BasicEmail.CONTENT_TYPE_NAME];
    // Replaces the default Email Builder section
    options.RegisterDefaultSection = false;
    options.DefaultSectionIdentifier = FullWidthEmailSection.IDENTIFIER;
});

builder.Services.AddMjmlForEmails();
...

Configure the Starter Kit

Similar to the Email Builder configuration, you also need to configure the Starter Kit when the application starts.

The available options allow you to define the path to a stylesheet that Email Builder will use, and the allowed content types to restrict the selections of the Image and Product widgets.

For our example, let’s use styles from the Starter Kit, and restrict the widget selectors to the content types we already mapped to the widget models.

Copy the stylesheet

Since email CSS is beyond the scope of this example, let’s just copy the Dancing Goat stylesheet for Email Builder from the Starter Kit repository.

In the Starter Kit repo, find the EmailBuilder.css file under the examples/DancingGoat/wwwroot folder and copy it to the wwwroot folder of your TrainingGuides.Web project.

Now, you can reference this file in the Starter Kit configuration.

Configure the Starter Kit

Returning to the Program.cs file, use the AddKenticoMjmlStarterKit method to configure the Starter Kit’s options. You need to tell it where to find your Email Builder CSS and which content types the Image and Product selectors can use.

C#
Program.cs 

...
using Kentico.Xperience.Mjml.StarterKit.Rcl;
using Kentico.Xperience.Mjml.StarterKit.Rcl.Sections;
...
builder.Services.AddKenticoMjmlStarterKit(options =>
{
    options.StyleSheetPath = "EmailBuilder.css";
    // The Asset content type, which we mapped to the Image widget earlier
    options.AllowedImageContentTypes = [Asset.CONTENT_TYPE_NAME];
    // The Product page content type, which we mapped to the Product widget earlier.
    options.AllowedProductContentTypes = [ProductPage.CONTENT_TYPE_NAME];
});
...

If you prefer to configure these values in your appsettings.json file, you can call builder.Services.AddKenticoMjmlStarterKit(builder.Configuration); instead.

Then you can set the options under the MjmlStarterKitOptions object in appsettings.json.

See the results

The Starter Kit is now integrated into your project.

If you’ve been following along with the Training guides example, you can see the results by creating a new email in the Training guides emails channel.

Explore further

To see more examples of Email Builder components in action, we recommend checking out those used on the Community Portal.

Here, you can see the code that makes up community.kentico.com, our site for the Xperience by Kentico community, which features many helpful resources.

4 of 13