How do you handle email delivery notifications with SendGrid API in Spring Boot?

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Setting Up Email Delivery Notifications with SendGrid in Spring Boot
  • 1. Enable Webhooks in SendGrid
    • a. Create a Webhook URL
    • b. Configure SendGrid Webhook
  • 2. Process Email Delivery Notifications
    • a. Parsing and Handling the Payload
    • b. Processing Event Data
  • 3. Testing Email Delivery Notifications
• Conclusion

Introduction

When sending emails using SendGrid, tracking email delivery status is crucial for maintaining communication reliability. Email delivery notifications include events such as successful deliveries, bounces, clicks, opens, and unsubscribes. To handle these notifications, you can configure SendGrid’s event webhook, which allows your Spring Boot application to receive updates on email delivery statuses.

In this guide, we will walk you through how to handle email delivery notifications using SendGrid's webhook in a Spring Boot application.

Setting Up Email Delivery Notifications with SendGrid in Spring Boot

1. Enable Webhooks in SendGrid

First, you need to set up a webhook endpoint in your SendGrid account to receive email delivery notifications.

a. Create a Webhook URL

1. In your Spring Boot application, create an endpoint to receive POST requests from SendGrid.

EmailNotificationController.java:

This controller listens for incoming POST requests at /email/notifications/event, where SendGrid will send email event notifications.

b. Configure SendGrid Webhook

1. Log in to your SendGrid account and navigate to Settings > Mail Settings > Event Webhook.
2. Add the URL of your webhook endpoint (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/email/notifications/event).
3. Choose the types of events you want to receive notifications for, such as:
   • Delivered
   • Bounce
   • Open
   • Click
   • Unsubscribe
4. Save the configuration.

2. Process Email Delivery Notifications

After setting up the webhook, SendGrid will send HTTP POST requests with event data to your webhook URL. These events contain details about email deliveries and actions taken by recipients.

The event data is usually sent as JSON. You can use the @RequestBody annotation in your Spring Boot controller to capture and process this JSON payload.

a. Parsing and Handling the Payload

SendGrid sends the event notifications as a JSON object containing a list of events. Here's an example of an event payload:

You can define a model class to parse this JSON data:

EmailEvent.java:

b. Processing Event Data

In your controller, you can now process the incoming events by parsing the payload and acting on specific event types such as delivery success, bounce, or open:

In this example, processEmailEvent handles different event types such as delivered, bounce, open, etc. You can extend this logic to update your database or trigger other actions based on the event.

3. Testing Email Delivery Notifications

To test the webhook integration, you can use tools like RequestBin to capture webhook requests from SendGrid. Set up a request bin and use its URL in the SendGrid webhook configuration to simulate events and monitor the incoming requests.

Alternatively, if you're running your application locally, you can use ngrok to expose your local server to the internet. Once set up, you can use the provided ngrok URL in SendGrid's webhook configuration.

Conclusion

Handling email delivery notifications with SendGrid in Spring Boot is an essential part of email tracking. By configuring a webhook to receive events like deliveries, bounces, clicks, and unsubscribes, you can track email statuses and take appropriate actions within your application. This setup ensures that you can monitor email performance and address any issues promptly, improving the overall communication with your users.