how can I render laravel mailable to variable - laravel

Question

I need to get the html of a Mailable class
$mail->html = (new InactivityReminder())->"do something to output the html"
There seems to be no toHtml method or something similar.
Mailable:
class InactivityReminder extends Mailable
{
use Queueable, SerializesModels;
public function __construct()
{
}
public function build()
{
return $this->markdown('mail.it.inactivityReminder');
}
}

Answer 1

In 5.5 the render() method will render the view that you return in Mailable:
$html = (new InactivityReminder)->render()

Answer 2

The interface does not provide that functionality. That means relying on it can cause problems when updating Laravel in the future. If this is not an issue for you you can use the render() method which returns a View object and then call render() on that.
So:
(new InactivityReminder)->render()->render()
alternatively:
(string) (new InactivityReminder)->render()
as __toString() on View will call it's render method.

Answer 3

For fully customizable mails in Laravel, I've had better luck using Mailables rather than Notifiables. Here's what worked for me:
Mailable class:
use Illuminate\Mail\Mailable;
class MyMail extends Mailable
{
public function __construct($someData) {
$this->someData = $someData;
}
public function build() {
return $this->markdown('mail/my-mail-view')
->with([
"someData" => $this->someData
]);
}
}
Mail view (resources/view/mail/my-mail-view.blade.php):
#extends('mail/mail-layout')
#section('content')
<p>Hi {{ $someData->first_name }}</p>
#endsection
Mail layout (resources/view/mail/mail-layout.blade.php):
<div class="myMailBody">
#yield('content')
</div>
Mail css file (resources/views/vendor/mail/html/themes/default.css):
(assuming you already ran "php artisan vendor:publish --tag=laravel-mail")
.myMailBody {
// css styles here
}
Code in controller:
$previewMailHtml = (string) (new \Illuminate\Mail\Markdown(view(), config('mail.markdown')))->render('mail/my-mail-view', [
"someData" => $someData
]);