Mail & Notifications

Two ways to reach a user

Almost every app needs to contact users — a welcome email, a "your order shipped" alert, a password reset. Laravel gives you two related tools:

• A Mailable — a class representing one email: its subject, who it is from, and which Blade view is its body.
• A Notification — a class representing one message that can be delivered over several channels at once (email, a database row for an in-app bell icon, Slack, SMS).

Rule of thumb: if you only need email, a Mailable is simplest. If the same message should reach the user in multiple places, use a Notification.

Sending an email with a Mailable

Generate the Mailable, with a Blade view for its body:

php artisan make:mail WelcomeMail --view=emails.welcome

This creates app/Mail/WelcomeMail.php plus a Blade view at resources/views/emails/welcome.blade.php — the email’s body is just a normal Blade template, so you write it like any page. Inside the Mailable you set the subject and the view:

// app/Mail/WelcomeMail.php
public function __construct(public User $user) {}

public function envelope(): Envelope
{
    return new Envelope(subject: 'Welcome to CodingClave!');
}

public function content(): Content
{
    return new Content(view: 'emails.welcome');
}

The constructor carries the $user so the template can greet them. envelope() sets the subject line. content() names the Blade view used for the body. Now send it from anywhere with one expressive line:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail;

Mail::to($user->email)->send(new WelcomeMail($user));

Mail::to($user->email) chooses the recipient, and ->send(new WelcomeMail($user)) sends that email to them. While learning, set MAIL_MAILER=log in .env so emails are written to a log file instead of really sent — perfect for testing.

Reaching multiple channels with a Notification

A Notification can deliver the same message over several channels. Generate one, then list the channels in via() and describe each channel’s content:

// app/Notifications/OrderShipped.php
public function via($notifiable): array
{
    return ['mail', 'database'];   // send by email AND store in the DB
}

public function toMail($notifiable): MailMessage
{
    return (new MailMessage)
        ->subject('Your order has shipped')
        ->line('Good news — your order is on the way!');
}

public function toArray($notifiable): array
{
    return ['message' => 'Your order has shipped'];  // for the database
}

Reading it: via() returns the list of channels — here mail and database — so this notification both emails the user and saves a row they can see in an in-app notifications panel. toMail() builds the email body with simple ->line() calls (no Blade needed for basic emails), and toArray() is the data stored for the database channel. You send it on the user model itself:

$user->notify(new OrderShipped());

$user->notify(new OrderShipped()) fires the notification through every channel in via() — one call, delivered to email and the database together. (For the database channel, run php artisan make:notifications-table && php artisan migrate once to create the notifications table.)