Using your GMail as ActionMailer Carrier

this was merely a try, it worked, but i don't think it's recommended so much, google might get angry.

create a conf file named ssmtp.conf in /etc/ssmtp

1. # Config file for sSMTP sendmail  
2. #  
3. # The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000  
4. # Make this empty to disable rewriting.  
5. root=postmaster  
6.    
7. # The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required no   
8. # MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com  
9.    
10. # GMAIL configuration  
11. mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587  
12. AuthUser=youremail@gmail.com  
13. AuthPass=pass  
14. UseSTARTTLS=YES  
15.    
16. # The full hostname  
17. hostname=machinehostname  
18.    
19. # Are users allowed to set their own From: address?  
20. # YES - Allow the user to specify their own From: address  
21. # NO - Use the system generated From: address  
22. FromLineOverride=YES  

then just point ActionMailer to user sendmail as carrier in your environment:

1. ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :sendmail  

and you are all set

Mean Mail Machine

i was trying the other day to create some sort of a newsletter. sadly it took me about 2 hours to generate and send 51000 emails (not spam :) ) so i tried to find a way to do it a little faster.
a friend of mine came across the idea of using threads so i tried to override the basics of ActionMailer in order to make the delivery method to user threads.
the change boosted me up to 18-20 mails per second, in other words, 1900% more efficient!
here is the code, just push it in your environment.rb (or lib, whatever), just don't use it for mean/nasty/microsoft needs :).

1. ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :thread_smtp  
2.   module ActionMailer  
3.     class Base  
4.       def perform_delivery_thread_smtp(mail)  
5.         thread = Thread.new do  
6.           perform_delivery_smtp(mail)  
7.         end  
8.         thread.run   
9.       end  
10.   end  
11. end