Laravel notification sent with no content and wrong subject - laravel

Question

I've created this notification in app/Notifications:
class StatisticsExportNotification extends Notification implements ShouldQueue
{
use Queueable;
use EmailNotificationViewHTMLTrait;
protected $links;
/**
* Create a new notification instance.
*
*/
public function __construct($links)
{
$this->links = $links;
}
/**
* Get the notification's delivery channels.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #return array
*/
public function via($notifiable)
{
return [
MailChannel::class
];
}
/**
* Get the mail representation of the notification.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #return \Illuminate\Notifications\Messages\MailMessage
*/
public function toMail($notifiable)
{
list($subject, $viewData) = $this->getNotificationViewHTML('statistics_export', $notifiable, ['links' => $this->links]);
return (new MailMessage())
->subject($subject)
->view('mail.main', compact('viewData'));
}
}
I'm trying to send it like this:
$member->notify(
new StatisticsExportNotification('testing')
);
Right now, the content of the email HTML template is just:
{{links}}
But I have confirmed that the same issue occurs if the HTML is just a hardcoded string and if I don't try to pass any variables to it.
That issue being, it seems to me that the toMail method is somehow not being called at all here. When I do logger()->debug($links) inside the class constructor, it logs the value of the variable. But when I do logger()->debug('test') inside toMail(), it doesn't log anything!
If I hardcode the subject and content inside the method, it makes no difference:
public function toMail($notifiable)
{
$subject = "foo";
$viewData = ["test" => "bar"];
return (new MailMessage())
->subject($subject)
->view('mail.main', compact('viewData'));
}
Whatever I do, the system sends the notification to the member's email, but the subject is "Statistics Export Notification" and the email body is empty!
What getNotificationViewHTML does is get the template of the message and populate it with the data we pass to it, but again, this code seems to never come into play at all. I've tried adding logging inside that method as well, and even putting in code that I know would throw an error if executed, but whatever I do, the notification sends with the same default subject and the same empty body.

Answer 1

I tried to recreate your Issue, and I think I did somehow, but I can never be sure 100% until you test it yourself. So Here is some advices :
1- While testing, try using direct array instead of compact to convert it
public function toMail($notifiable)
{
$subject = "foo";
$viewData = ["links" => "Here is the Links"];
return (new MailMessage())
->subject($subject)
->view('mail.main', $viewData);
}
2- In your mail.main view file, the correct syntax should embrace the variable name with $ :
{{ $links }}
and not just
{{ links }}
3- Probably your real issue there, MAKE SURE your view file has .blade.php so that Blade is allowed to parse codes like #section, #yield, {{$links}}, etc. Your mail view filename should be :
views/mail/main.blade.php
4- DO NOT FORGET TO RESTART QUEUE Codes after changing any codes from Statistics Notification file. And this should set the $subject successfully :
php artisan queue:restart
and after start it again
php artisan queue:work --tries=3

Answer 2

Try swapping out your via method with an array of strings:
/**
* Get the notification's delivery channels.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #return array
*/
public function via($notifiable)
{
return ['mail'];
}

Answer 3

Does the definition of getNotificationViewHTML return an array [subject, html]?
The list keyword unpacks an array's elements, starting with the 0th element. Since you say the subject and content are wrong, my money is on the return value of getNotificationViewHTML.
To test, just hardcode getNotificationViewHTML like this:
public function getNotificationViewHTML()
{
return ["This Is the Subject", "<h1>This is My Message</h1>"];
}
If your mail then comes through with those values, you need to tailor your getNotificationViewHTML return value to match the example's format.