Laravel skip sending mail based on conditions - laravel

Question

I'm looping through users in my controller function and sending an email to each user, but there's a special user who will sometimes be in the list who shouldn't receive emails.
I'd like to put an if statement in to skip that loop iteration if it's that user, but when I add return, return null etc, or just nothing in my if/else in the mailable class build function I get
InvalidArgumentException
Invalid view.
I could add the conditional in the controller and I'm sure that would be fine, except I have these emails in a whole load of my controllers so would be writing the conditional many times. If I can get it into a central location (and the mailable class is the only one I'm aware of) then I can write it once.
EDIT: the loop code has been requested so added below, but this is just one of many email loops in my controllers so NOT where I'd like to add my conditional.
$objNotification = new \stdClass();
$objNotification->message_body = "stuff";
$user_ids = DB::select('select user_id from users_to_things where thing_id = ?', [$thing->id]);
foreach($user_ids as $user_id) {
$user = User::find($user_id->user_id);
$objNotification->receiver = $user->name;
Mail::to($user->email)->send(new NotificationEmail($objNotification));
}
Here's my mailable class's build function (where I DO want to add the conditional if at all possible):
public function build()
{
if($this->notification->receiver == 'the special user') {
return;
} else {
return $this->from('somebody#somewhere.com', 'Sender Name')
->subject('some subject')
->view('emails.notification')
->text('emails.notification_plain');
}
}

Answer 1

What you want would conflict with the Single Responsibility Principle. The class is only suppose to send the email.
The build() in your mailable class returns error cause it expect you to return a message ( subject ,body, template or view, etc) for your mail.
1.) maybe instead you can assert a fake mail in your condition;
2.) Create a function in email class
public function needSend($mail)
{
... loads of conditions
return (condition) ? true : false;
}
then
if ($mail->needSend($mail)) {
\Mail::send($mail);
}
3.) Or the easiest but dirtiest way is you can put the condition inside your Controller in your for loop
foreach($user_ids as $user_id) {
$user = User::find($user_id->user_id);
$objNotification->receiver = $user->name;
if(condition == true) continue;
Mail::to($user->email)->send(new NotificationEmail($objNotification));
}
You can also read this thread on github. https://github.com/laravel/ideas/issues/519

Answer 2

Using the notification class, check your condition like a suppression list or maybe runtime condition. Return an empty array and it'll exit.
/**
* Get the notification's delivery channels.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #return array
*/
public function via($notifiable)
{
return $notifiable->notificationSuppression()->exists() ? [] : ['mail'];
}