Email Template preview

Question

I want to show the email template of Visualforce type to user with the merge fields. But when I try to fetch the Body or HtmlValue fields from EmailTemplate record it returns null.

Showing markup field value doesn't make sense to user.

How can I get the correct HtmlValue or Body?

Answer 1

What I did to resolve this is copying the url of the 'manual' preview and putting that into an Iframe. I tested it for an HTML template but the same principle should work for a VisualForce template I'd think:

<apex:iframe title="Preview" 
             id="previewFrame" 
             scrolling="no" 
             frameborder="0" 
             height="961" 
             width="665" 
            src="{!ContentUrl}/email/templaterenderer?id={!templateId}&related_to_id={!theOpp.Id}&preview_frame=previewFrame&base_href={!BaseUrl}&render_type=REPLACED_HTML_BODY" />

The following APEX variables are used:

public Id templateId {
    get{
        if(templateId == null){
            EmailTemplate template = [select Id from EmailTemplate where DeveloperName = 'The_Email_Template'];
            templateId = template.Id;
        }
        return templateId;
    }
    private set;
}
public String getBaseUrl(){
    return System.URL.getSalesforceBaseUrl().toExternalForm();
}
public String getContentUrl(){
    return System.URL.getSalesforceBaseUrl().toExternalForm().replace('.visual.force.com','.content.force.com');
} 

Lastly, theOpp.Id is in this case the Opportunity Id but can be any Id of the relatedto record for the email template.