Using Mailto to Email from a Form
Mailto.exe provides the ability to send data entered into an HTML form to be emailed to
one or more specified email addresses. In addition, you can enforce data entry rules on the
user such as forcing them to provide an email address (it will even do rudimentary email
validation). Once the data has been processed, the browser can be sent a simple message
verifying completion of the process, or it can even be sent a formatted HTML page.
Usage
Let's say we had a simple form that looked like like this:
Note: You will return to this page if you submit the data.
The code for this form looks like this:-
<form action="/scripts/mailto.exe" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="email_email" value="Please enter an email address">
<input type="hidden" name="sendto" value="recipient@mydomain.com">
<input type="hidden" name="server" value="mail.xhost.co.uk">
<input type="hidden" name="SERVER_NAME_display" value>
<input type="hidden" name="resulturl" value="/v2tools/mailto.htm">
<input type="hidden" name="TestForm_counter" value>
<table border="0">
<tr><td>First Name:</td> <td><input type="text" size="20" name="firstname"></td></tr>
<tr><td>Last Name:</td> <td><input type="text" size="20" name="lastname"></td></tr>
<tr><td>Email Address:</td> <td><input type="text" size="20" name="email"></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" align="right"><input type="submit" value="Send Information "></td></tr>
</table>
</form>
<p>Note: You will return to this page if you submit the data.</p>
Notice the first tag which calls the mailto.exe in the /scripts directory.
The next three lines specify the fields the user has to fill out. The three lines after that are
the "hidden" fields that tell MAILTO what to do with the data it has been given from the
form. All the possible "hidden" fields are listed below.
Mailto Fields
In an HTML form, a user enters data info form fields such as Last Name, City, etc. Mailto
adds "hidden" fields which are not necessarily visible to the user, but force Mailto to
either add information to the email message, execute a particular action, or check a
particular "visible" field for correct information. Most of the fields listed below are optional
unless otherwise specified.
Email Fields
The following fields specify what is done with the email message.
sendto
The address of the recipient of the email message. If this field is not present, no email message will be sent. For example:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="sendto" VALUE="webmaster@mydomain.com">
cc
A comma separated list of other recipients of the form contents. For example:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="cc" VALUE="abc@company.com,efg@company.com">
server
Name of one or more mail servers to send the mail to. If more than one mail
server is specified (as a comma separated list) then MAILTO will work
through the list giving each mail server five seconds before moving on to
the next. You should use your SMTP server and backup SMTP server. For
example, mail.xhost.co.uk is usually the primary SMTP server, while
mail2.mydomain.com would be the backup SMTP server and this would
appear as follows:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="server" VALUE="mail.xhost.co.uk,mail2.mydomain.com">
subject
The subject of the mail message. If not specified, the value variable "HTTP_REFERER" will be used.
resulturl
The full URL for the next page to display if the mail operation was
successful. If neither this nor resulttxt is defined, a default "thank you"
message will be displayed.
resulttxt
Some text that is displayed in the "Thank you" message after the mail
message has been sent. This allows a form to be created quickly. If neither
this nor resulturl is defined, a default "thank you" message will be
displayed.
uname
Name of the user who has completed the form. This field will be placed in
the "From:" clause of the email message to aid filing.
email
The email address of the person filling out the form. The contents of this
field will also be placed into the From: clause of the mail message. When
you receive this message, you will be able to type "Reply" and reply to the
person who filled the form.
webmaster
This field contains the email address of the World Wide Web Server
Administrator. Whenever an error message is displayed and this value is
defined, a "selectable" email address will be appended to the end of the
message.
Field Contents fields
These hidden fields have the same name as the field they control except that they have a
_command afterwards and the value may be text message to display to the user if the test
fails. More than one command may be used for each field. The MAILTO program will
search for any conditions that fail and display all the error messages at the same time. This
means that the user may be presented with a list of things to correct rather than one item at
a time.
_required
This command indicates that the specified field must be completed by the
user before the email message is sent. As long as the user enters something,
the test is satisfied. If nothing is entered, the text in the "value" clause is
displayed. For example:
<input type="hidden" name="uname_required" value="Please enter your name">
will force the user to enter something in the field called "uname". If they do
not enter anything, they will be told:
"Please enter your name"
_counter
The Mailto program will maintain a set of counters so that you can
uniquely identify every message that has been processed. The _counter
command will access the specified counter, increment it and place the result
in the email message. If any of the conditions fail, the counter will not be
incremented. For example:
<input type="hidden" name="applications_counter">
will add the following line to the resulting email message:
applications = 3
If the counter does not exist, it will automatically be created and given the value 1.
_email
Check that the specified field could be a valid email address. The check that
MAILTO carries out is to make sure the text entered has a "@" sign in it.
Thus "mark" would fail and "mark@company.com" would succeed. Note
that "mark@" would also succeed and that the domain name is not verified.
If the check fails, the message in the "VALUE" part is displayed. For
example:
<input type="hidden" name="email_email" value="Please enter your email address">
will force the user to enter an email address in the field called "email". If they
do not enter anything they will be told:
Please enter your email address
Please Note: if you require better error handling than this, we suggest you
give ColdFusion a shot. Read through the ColdFusion manuals for more information.
_num
Check that the specified field contains a valid number. The following
characters are allowed in a number:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 + - . , E e
If anything else is entered the user will be presented with the text in the
"value" field. For example:
<input type="hidden" name="age_num" value="Please enter your age in years">
will force the user to enter an number in the field called "age". If they do not
enter anything they will be told:
Please enter your age in years
_display
This command can be used to place the values of variables supplied by the
WWW server into the email message. The special field *_display will cause
all variables from the WWW server to be displayed - this can be used to
select those that may be of interest. The following values may be of interest:
| SERVER_SOFTWARE | Name of the server software. |
| SERVER_NAME | Name of the WWW server. |
| SERVER_PROTOCOL | HTML protocol supported by the server. |
| SERVER_PORT | Port number of connection from remote client. |
| REMOTE_HOST IP | address of the remote client. |
| REMOTE_ADDR IP | Address of the remote client. |
| HTTP_USER_AGENT | The remote client software. |
| HTTP_REFERER | URL of the page where the form was entered. |
Thus the command:
<input type="hidden" name="REMOTE_ADDR_display">
will add the field:
REMOTE_ADDR = 123.123.123.123
to the resulting email message.
_hidden
This command forces the variable to be excluded from the email message or file.
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