Inky is an HTML-based templating language that converts simple HTML into complex, responsive email-ready HTML. Designed for Foundation for Emails, a responsive email framework from ZURB.

To include only the Foundation for Emails styles in your Asset Pipeline, without Inky, use the foundation_emails gem.

Give Inky simple HTML like this:

<row>
  <columns large="6"></columns>
  <columns large="6"></columns>
</row>

And get complicated, but battle-tested, email-ready HTML like this:

<table class="row">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th class="small-12 large-6 columns first">
        <table>
          <tr>
            <th class="expander"></th>
          </tr>
        </table>
      </th>
      <th class="small-12 large-6 columns first">
        <table>
          <tr>
            <th class="expander"></th>
          </tr>
        </table>
      </th>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Add the following gems to your Gemfile:

gem 'inky-rb', require: 'inky'
# Stylesheet inlining for email **
gem 'premailer-rails'

Then execute:

bundle install

Run the following command to set up the required styles and mailer layout:

rails g inky:install

(You can specify the generated mailer layout filename like so: rails g inky:install some_name)

Rename your email templates to use the .inky file extension. Note that you'll still be able to use ERB within the .inky templates:

welcome.html      => welcome.html.inky
pw_reset.html.erb => pw_reset.html.inky

You're all set!

** The majority of email clients ignore linked stylesheets. By using a CSS inliner like premailer-rails or roadie, you're able to leave your stylesheets in a separate file, keeping your markup lean.

Inky simplifies the process of creating HTML emails by expanding out simple tags like <row> and <column> into full table syntax. The names of the tags can be changed with the components setting.

Here are the names of the defaults:

{
  button: 'button',
  row: 'row',
  columns: 'columns',
  container: 'container',
  inky: 'inky',
  block_grid: 'block-grid',
  menu: 'menu',
  center: 'center',
  callout: 'callout',
  spacer: 'spacer',
  wrapper: 'wrapper',
  menu_item: 'item'
}

The Inky parser can be accessed directly for programmatic use.