Laravel 5.3 Send Notification to Users without an account

Question

With the Laravel 5.3 Notification feature, I see that the notifications are sent to users like this:

$user->notify(new InvoicePaid($invoice));

Where I believe $user is the notifiable entity. What if I want to send notifications to users who doesn't have an account yet? In my app, users send invitation to their friends to join. I am trying to use Laravel's Notification to send the invite code to users who don't have an account yet.

When users invite someone, their data is stored in Invite Model like this:

class Invite extends Model
  {
    protected $table = 'invites';
    protected $fillable = array('name', 'email', 'invite_code', 'expires_at', 'invited_by');
    protected $dates = ['expires_at'];
   }

I thought I can use notify to send notifications to the Invite model like this:

$invite = Invite::find($inviteId);
$invite->notify(new InvitationNotification(ucfirst($invite->name), $invite->invite_code, $invite->expires_at));  

But the above doesnt work. I get the error:

Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder::notify()

So my question is:

1. Am I able to send Notification only to User Model?

2. Is there a way to send Notifications to new users who doesnt have an account yet?

3. Is my only choice is to use Laravel's Mailable class instead of Notification in these cases?

Answer 1

Some alternative solution could be to just new up a user model and set the email attribute without saving it. The instance can now be notified.

I don't see this as the correct approach for this particular case, but for the questions written and since this thread provides some different ways to notify a non-existing user I thought I would write it here.

$invitedUser = new User;
$invitedUser->email = 'invite@me.com';
$invitedUser->notify(new InvitationNotification());

Beware, that this solution may cause problems when queueing notification (because it doesn't reference a specific user id).

In Laravel >=5.5 it is possible to make an "on-demand notification", which covers this exact case, where you want to notify a non-existing user.

Example from the docs:

Notification::route('mail', 'taylor@example.com')
        ->route('nexmo', '5555555555')
        ->notify(new InvoicePaid($invoice));

This will send the notification to the email address, and that approach can be queued etc.

The docs: https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/notifications#on-demand-notifications

Answer 2

I found your post looking for the same thing but answered it myself.

You need to use Notifiable; on the Invite model.

You then import use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable; and should be able to use ->notify on the Invite model.

$invite = Invite::create([
    'name' => $request->get('name'),
    'email' => $request->get('email'),
    'token' => str_random(60),
]);

$invite->notify(new UserInvite());

That is how I handle sending the notification :)

You can then pass through $invite and use that within the notification template.

Answer 3

Notifications are meant to be sent to a notifiable object. You don’t “notify” an invitation.

If all you’re wanting to do is email someone that they’ve been invited to use an application, then just send an email to that email address. Notifications aren’t appropriate in this instance.

Answer 4

I just figured out a simpler way to this. First you have to override the 'register' function in your RegisterController class. In order to do that:

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Auth\Events\Registered;

public function register(Request $request)
{


}

Then add these lines in your register function;

1. $user = $this->create($request->all()); //To create and save the user
2. $user->notify(new NewRegistrationNotification($request)); //To call the specified notification class
3. return redirect()->to('/')->with('msg', 'Thanks for registering! Check your inbox for the activation link');

Next, configure your Notification class to handle the message send. I did something like this in my constructor;

protected $data;

public function __construct(Request $request)
{
     $this->data = $request;
}

I hope this helps somebody.

Answer 5

I had similar issue and I was able to get around it by using an instance of \Illuminate\Notifications\AnonymousNotifiable. This object gets serialized and does not require any DB infrastructure and works with queuing.

$anonymousNotifiable = new AnonymousNotifiable();
$anonymousNotifiable->route('mail', ['scott.tiger@domain.com' => 'Scott Tiger']);
$anonymousNotifiable->notify(new NotificationExample());

You can also call the static function route on class \Illuminate\Support\Facades\Notification which returns an instance of AnonymousNotifiable:

Notification::route('mail', ['scott.tiger@domain.com' => 'Scott Tiger'])->notify(new NotificationExample());