Laravel 5.6 How to schedule email queue

Question

I'm trying to schedule an email to remind users who have to-do tasks due tomorrow. I made a custom command email:reminder. Here is my code in custom command:

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use App\Todo;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;

class SendReminderEmail extends Command
{
    /**
     * The name and signature of the console command.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $signature = 'email:reminder';

    /**
     * The console command description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description = 'Remind users of items due to complete next day';

    /**
     * Create a new command instance.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    /**
     * Execute the console command.
     *
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        //
        /*
         * Send mail dynamically
         */

        /*
         * hardcoded email
         */
        Mail::queue('emails.reminder', [], function ($mail) {
            $mail->to('example@email.com')
                ->from('todoreminder@gmail.com', 'To-do Reminder')
                ->subject('Due tomorrow on your To-do list!');
        }
        );


        $this->info('Reminder email sent successfully!');
    }
}

I hardcoded the email for now to test it, but when I ran php artisan email:reminder, I got an exception of

[InvalidArgumentException]     
  Only mailables may be queued.

I then checked Laravel's documentation, but Task Scheduling and Email Queue are 2 separate topic.

• How can I achieve sending email queue with task scheduling in Laravel 5.6 please?
• Also how can I pass data, i.e. to-do items in database into my email view please?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Using the console kernel to schedule queued jobs is easy to do. Laravel offers several wrapper methods that make the cron integration trivial. Here's a basic example:

$schedule->job(new SendTodoReminders())->dailyAt('9:00');

Answer 2

 Mail::queue('emails.reminder', [], function ($mail) {
            $mail->to('example@email.com')
                ->from('todoreminder@gmail.com', 'To-do Reminder')
                ->subject('Due tomorrow on your To-do list!');
        }
        );

is deprecated since Laravel 5.3. Only the Mailables can Queued and it should implement the ShouldQueue interface.

For running jobs you have to configure the queue driver and run php artisan queue:work

Answer 3

You should create a command which does exactly as you described, but without the scheduling. You can use the crontab for scheduling or some other task scheduler.

Have you followed Laravel's documentation about mailing? https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/mail

Once you get to the Sending Mail section, you should not create a controller but a command instead.

When that command works, add it to the task scheduler (eg. crontab) to run on a daily basis.