Magento Newsletter Unsubscribe Form

One of the most missed functions in Magento 1 is a newsletter unsubscribe form. Although, by default you can generate newsletter unsubscribe links to be used for instance in newsletters sent out to subscribers there’s no nice out-of-the-box way to integrate a newsletter unsubscribe form in Magento 1.

Which is why there already exist some extensions on the Magento Connect Marketplace that extend the existing newsletter functionality by e.g. adding a simple unsubscribe field and toggling the action submitted (“subscribe” vs. “unsubscribe”). Unfortunately, having a look at most of the existing extensions made clear that they either include too much functionality or simply are outdated.

Implementing the Magento Newsletter Unsubscribe Extension

Luckily, implementing the newsletter unsubscribe functionality in Magento is pretty straight forward. In order to share this information here’s the gist on how to create a Magento Newsletter unsubscribe form extension.

Basically, what we are trying to achieve here is an additional Magento page with a distinct URL that incorporates our newsletter unsubscribe form, i.e. “newsletter-unsubscribe”. This form handles submissions and checks if the e-mail submitted currently is subscribed to the Magento newsletter. If that’s the case it will unsubscribe this e-mail based on the built-in Magento functionality, i.e. it will automatically sent out the un-subscription confirmation mail and execute any other events that you might have integrated for newsletter related events. Last but not least, as always everything should be translatable.

Custom route instead of CMS page

Instead of creating an additional CMS page and loading our newsletter unsubscribe form into it (e.g. using layout updates) we are going to create a custom route for our extension. By default, this route will be newsletter-unsubscribe. The relevant entries in the config.xml are as follows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
 
  <modules>
    <BothInteract_NewsletterUnsubscribe>
      <version>1.0.1</version>
    </BothInteract_NewsletterUnsubscribe>
  </modules> 
 
  <frontend>
    <routers>
      <bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe>
        <use>standard</use>
        <args>
          <module>BothInteract_NewsletterUnsubscribe</module>
          <frontName>newsletter-unsubscribe</frontName>
        </args>
      </bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe>
    </routers>
 
    <secure_url>
      <bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe>/newsletter-unsubscribe/</bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe>
    </secure_url>

    ...
</config>

As you can see an additional frontend route is added (newsletter-unsubscribe) that maps to our extensions’s controller.

Display newsletter unsubscribe form

Now that URLs starting with “newsletter-unsubscribe” are routed to our controller we need to make sure that our custom block is loaded and unsubscribe submissions are processed correctly.

As always, the default action is index and in our case it’s responsible for rendering or newsletter unsubscribe form:

public function indexAction() {

  $this->loadLayout();

  // load 1-column page layout
  $this->getLayout()
    ->getBlock('root')
    ->setTemplate('page/1column.phtml');

  // load breadcrumb bar
  $breadcrumbs = $this->getLayout()->getBlock('breadcrumbs');
  $helper = Mage::app()->getHelper('bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe');

  if ($breadcrumbs) {
    $breadcrumbs->addCrumb('home', array(
      'label' => $helper->__('Home'),
      'title' => $helper->__('Go to Home Page'),
      'link' => Mage::getBaseUrl()));
    $breadcrumbs->addCrumb('newsletter-unsubscribe', array(
      'label' => $helper->__('Newsletter Unsubscribe'),
      'title' => $helper->__('Newsletter Unsubscribe'),
      'link' => Mage::getUrl('newsletter-unsubscribe')));
  }

  // render our custom block
  $block = $this->getLayout()
    ->createBlock('bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe/customblock')
    ->setTemplate('bothinteract_newsletterunsubscribe/form.phtml');

  // append to CMS content block
  $this->getLayout()->getBlock('content')->append($block);

  $this->renderLayout();
}

There’s no magic here but let’s quickly dissect what is happening:

First, we are loading the layout and setting the 1-column page layout by default .

Hint: Using additional extension backend options we can make these settings available for users to edit directly without touching the code. This will be available in version 1.1.

Since we want our page to appear in the breadcrumbs too we manually add it. Finally, we create and append our custom block while setting the corresponding template and render the final layout.

Process newsletter unsubscribe form submissions

Now that we are able to display the newsletter unsubscribe form it’s time to process form submissions. This is done using the unsubscribe action:

public function unsubscribeAction() {
  if ($this->getRequest()->isPost() && $this->getRequest()->getPost('email')) {
    $session = Mage::getSingleton('core/session');
    $email = (string) $this->getRequest()->getPost('email');

  try {
    if (!Zend_Validate::is($email, 'EmailAddress')) {
      Mage::throwException($this->__('Please enter a valid email address.'));
    }

    $subscriber = Mage::getModel('newsletter/subscriber')
      ->loadByEmail($email);

    if ($subscriber && $subscriber->getId()) {
      // check already unsubscribed/inactivated before
      if ($subscriber->getStatus() == Mage_Newsletter_Model_Subscriber::STATUS_NOT_ACTIVE ||
        $subscriber->getStatus() == Mage_Newsletter_Model_Subscriber::STATUS_UNSUBSCRIBED) {
        $session->addSuccess($this->__('You are not registered with this e-mail.'));
      } else {
        $subscriber->unsubscribe();
        $session->addSuccess($this->__('You have been successfully unsubscribed.'));
      }
    } else {
      $session->addSuccess($this->__('You are not registered with this e-mail.'));
    }
   } catch (Mage_Core_Exception $e) {
     $session->addException($e, $this->__('There was a problem with the unsubscription: %s', $e->getMessage()));
   } catch (Exception $e) {
     $session->addException($e, $this->__('There was a problem with the unsubscription.'));
   }
  }
  $this->_redirectReferer();
}

Again, no magic is happening here. We are simply checking the submitted e-mail, try to load the corresponding newsletter subscriber object and check it’s status. Depending on the status we are able to unsubscribe this e-mail or display the appropriate message.

Our actual custom Magento block is very slim on purpose and only returns the form action URL of our custom extension:

class BothInteract_NewsletterUnsubscribe_Block_Customblock extends Mage_Core_Block_Template {

  public function getFormActionUrl() {
    return $this->getUrl('newsletter-unsubscribe/index/unsubscribe/', array('_secure' => true));
  }
}

Yes, that’s all there is to it. Sorry to disappoint you in case you are expecting magic stuff happening here. Thus, based on Magento’s stable architecture adding a newsletter unsubscribe form can be easily achieved.

Download Magento Newsletter Unsubscribe Extension

This extension has been released by Both Interact and is available for free on the Magento Connect marketplace as Both Interact Newsletter Unsubscribe extension. Feel free to download and rate the extension.