I have a rake task that send's out email notifications how can I group them

Question

I have a rake task that sends out email notifications based on my entries table:

If approve_disapprove has a "3" (3 means 'pending') it will send out an email to the person who approves the entry that a entry is still pending.

The problem with this is if there are multiple entries it will go through and find each entry with a 3 for approve_disapprove and send out an email for each one.

So if I have 5 entries and then when my task goes through the next day and sees they are still marked as 3 it will send 5 emails to the approver.

How can I group this so it chunks all of them together based off my other column in my entry table called section. If it chunked or grouped all of the entries with a 3 for pending and grouped them by section name it would only send one email with all 5 request in it to the manager with that section?

Here is my entry model that has the check_pending task

def self.check_pending # What this does is goes through each entry and looks at approve_disapprove if its a 3 which is pending it will sent an alert to the employees manager. 
  check_pending = Entry.where(approve_disapprove: 3)                      
  check_pending.each do |entry|
      EntryMailer.check_pending(entry).deliver
  end
end

This is my entry mailer for check pending

class EntryMailer < ActionMailer::Base

  def check_pending(entry)
    @entry = entry

    mail to: @entry.emp_mail_addr, subject: '(TEST) You have pending time off requests that require approval or disapproval'
  end
end

and this is my check_pending mailer view

Hello

#{@entry.mgr_name}


 The following time off request are pending please approve or disapprove once you have made your decision.


 %li
  %span.u= @entry.emp_first_name
  %span.u= @entry.emp_last_name
 %li Dept
 %li= @entry.emp_dept
 %li Leave Start
 %li= @entry.leave_start.strftime('%m/%d/%y')
 %li Leave End
 %li= @entry.leave_end.strftime('%m/%d/%y')
 %li Type Of Request
 %li= @entry.indirect_id

And this is the rake task

 desc "Looks at pending request if the are still marked pending sends a email to the manager for the request"
 task :check_pending => :environment do
   Rails.logger.info "Check Pending: Finding all pending."
   Entry.check_pending
   Rails.logger.info "Found Pending: Check complete."
   Rails.logger.flush
 end

extra info

Entry table columns

  table "entries"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
    t.string   "emp_id"
    t.string   "emp_no"
    t.string   "emp_first_name"
    t.string   "emp_last_name"
    t.string   "emp_mail_addr"
    t.string   "indirect_id"
    t.string   "mgr_no"
    t.string   "mgr_first_name"
    t.string   "mgr_last_name"
    t.string   "mgr_mail_addr"
    t.datetime "leave_start"
    t.string   "employee_type"
    t.integer  "seq_no",           
    t.decimal  "range_days",        
    t.string   "alt_mgr_no"
    t.string   "alt_mgr_name"
    t.string   "alt_mgr_addr"
    t.string   "emp_dept"
    t.datetime "leave_end"
    t.string   "approve_disapprove"
    t.string   "section"

Answer 1

The problem here is that you need the entry object to get the information about the entry, so you'd have to re-write the logic of the view.

Firstly, define a couple of scopes in your Entry model:

class Entry < ActiveRecord::Base #I'm assuming AR here
  scope :pending, -> { where(approve_disapprove: 3) }
  scope :for_section, ->(section) { where(section: section) }
end

then change your rake task to group on section and pass in a relation, rather than a single entry:

def self.check_pending 
  sections = Entry.pending.pluck(:section).uniq                     
  sections.each do |section|
      entries = Entry.pending.for_section(section)
      EntryMailer.check_pending(entries).deliver
  end
end

You'll then need to modify your mailer:

class EntryMailer < ActionMailer::Base

  def check_pending(entries)
    @entries = entries
    emails = @entries.map(&:emp_mail_addr).uniq.join(',') #may not need this if your email will always be the same, could just grab the first @entries.first.enp_addr
    mail to: emails, subject: '(TEST) You have pending time off requests that require approval or disapproval'
  end
end

And finally your view will need to iterate through these:

Hello

#{@entries.first.mgr_name}


 The following time off request are pending please approve or disapprove once you have made your decision.

- @entries.each do |entry|

  %li
    %span.u= entry.emp_first_name #note change from @entry to entry
    ...