Laravel Bento Quick Start

This tutorial sets up Bento in a Laravel app using the Bento-laravel-sdk. You'll configure Bento as your mail transport, send a transactional email, and sync new users to Bento with tags and fields.

Setting up Your Laravel Environment

Prepare your Laravel environment. This tutorial starts with a fresh install, but the SDK works the same in existing applications.

Install Laravel:

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Install dependencies:

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Set up Bento:

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Configuring Your Environment

Next, configure your app to work with Bento. You can find your Bento API keys and Site_UUID in the Bento account dashboard. Don't share them or commit them to source code.

If you want Bento to handle your transactional email, the SDK includes a transport for your convenience.

Open your .env file and add these lines:

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Update your config/mail.php file to use Bento as the mail transport:

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This example makes Bento the default mailer via the mail.php configuration, but you can also set it in your .env file via the MAIL_MAILER key.

The Bento mail transport works just like any other SMTP mail configuration you might be used to. We recommend using queues and something like supervisor for the best user experience.

Creating and Using a Mailable

Create a simple mailable that uses a view and sends it as a Bento transactional email.

There are many advantages to implementing this use case through a Bento flow, but this example keeps it simple.

Create a new mailable:

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Edit app/Mail/WelcomeMail.php and make a few additions:

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Create a view for the email at resources/views/emails/welcome.blade.php:

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Use the mailable. For example, edit App\Http\Controllers\Auth\RegisteredUserController:

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This example queues the email so users don't have to wait for it to send when they create an account. It does require a queue worker to be running.

Adding the User to Bento

When a user registers, add them as a subscriber to Bento. That way you can capture their activity and use it to trigger email flows in Bento.

Jump back into RegisteredUserController:

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For mature applications with many pre-existing users, take a look at our Laravel Importer to help you get started quickly.

Adding a Bento Tag to a User

Tags are great ways to segment users. In many email platforms they would be considered lists.

Tag the new user based on their source (website):

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Using Bento fields

Tags are great for segmentation, but sometimes you need to store user data to personalize emails. Fields are perfect for this.

Record a user's favorite color:

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With Bento's API, you can quickly build a complete subscriber profile for better targeting and personalization, often with a single API call.

The ImportSubscribers method safely merges new fields into a user's data without triggering any flows or events from the data you send.

Next Steps

Your Laravel app is now integrated with Bento. You can send email, sync new users as subscribers, tag them, and record custom data in fields for use in emails with liquid tags.

From here, explore more Bento features and tailor them to your needs. Contact us in Discord if you need help or have suggestions!