Rails 6 adds ActionMailer#email_address_with_name

When using ActionMailer::Base#mail, if we want to display name and email address of the user in email, we can pass a string in format "John Smith" <[email protected]> in to, from or reply_to options.

Before Rails 6, we had to join name and email address using string interpolation as mentioned in Rails 5.2 Guides and shown below.

  email_with_name = %("John Smith" <[email protected]>)
  mail(
    to: email_with_name,
    subject: 'Hey Rails 5.2!'
  )

Problem with string interpolation is it doesn't escape unexpected special characters like quotes(") in the name.

Here's an example.

Rails 5.2

irb(main):001:0> %("John P Smith" <[email protected]>)
=> "\"John P Smith\" <[email protected]>"

irb(main):002:0> %('John "P" Smith' <[email protected]>)
=> "'John \"P\" Smith' <[email protected]>"

Rails 6 adds ActionMailer::Base#email_address_with_name to join name and email address in the format "John Smith" <[email protected]> and take care of escaping special characters.

Rails 6.1.0.alpha

irb(main):001:0> ActionMailer::Base.email_address_with_name("[email protected]", "John P Smith")
=> "John P Smith <[email protected]>"

irb(main):002:0> ActionMailer::Base.email_address_with_name("[email protected]", 'John "P" Smith')
=> "\"John \\\"P\\\" Smith\" <[email protected]>"

mail(
to: email_address_with_name("[email protected]", "John Smith"),
subject: 'Hey Rails 6!'
)

Here's the relevant pull request for this change.