Sending Notifications

The edX E-Commerce service uses the Communications API that is part of Oscar to create and send notifications in the form of email messages. To send notifications, you must set up notifications, create one or more email messages, and then send the email messages.

Set Up Notifications

  1. Enable the E-Commerce service to send notifications. To do this, change the value of the ENABLE_NOTIFICATIONS feature flag to True.
  2. Define communication type codes to refer to particular types of notification. For example, you might define a communication type code named COURSE_SEAT_PURCHASED to correspond to the purchase of a course seat.

Create an Email Message

The E-Commerce service can send both HTML and plain text email messages. To create an email message, create the following three files in the ecommerce/ecommerce/templates/customer/emails/ folder.

  • An HTML template that extends email_base.html and includes the body of the email.
  • A plain text file that contains the email’s subject line.
  • A plain text file that contains the body of the email.

Use the following convention to name these files.

commtype_{communication type code}_body.html

For example, if the communication type code is course_seat_purchased, the three files would have the following names.

  • commtype_course_seat_purchased_body.html
  • commtype_course_seat_purchased_body.txt
  • commtype_course_seat_purchased_subject.txt

Note

To add a custom email body, override block body in the email_base.html file. To add a custom footer, override block footer in the email_base.html file.

Send Email Messages

To send email messages, use the send_notification(user, commtype_code, context) method. This method is implemented in ecommerce/ecommerce/notifications/notifications.py.