Email: Sending, Receiving and Reading Reply

[ezpzjohn]

I need email functions, for use within a VFP 8 application, as follows:

1. Send email from VFP where the body of the email is generated from VFP and can run to several hundred short lines consisting of codes/values.

2. Retrieve emails sent from a specific email address. Having received them must be able to search the body of the email to fetch certain coded data.

Does anyone know of a good 3rd party program that can do the above and that I can distribute with my application? It doesn't have to be free, I don't mind paying for licencing.

Thanks

John

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Does anyone know of a good 3rd party program that can do the above and that I can distribute with my application? It doesn't have to be free, I don't mind paying for licencing.

VFP is quite capable of doing all of this. Have a look at faq184-3894.


Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[ezpzjohn]

Thanks Mike.

The reason I don't want to use Outlook/Outlook Express is that the finished application must be a standalone one and must not be dependant on what email program the user has installed. Furthermore, the emails sent from my application must be sent straight away and not rely on the user carrying out a "Send and Receive" from his email program.

My application has to able to check for email replies from a certain email address and use the data in those replies to update certain tables in VFP. It is important that these updates are automatic and do not rely on the user being required to carry out a "Send and Receive" in order to get those email replies.

I am not user of Outlook myself (as I have never been able to set it up properly!) so I don't know if all the above is possible without an Outlook screen ever appearing.

John

 

[Mike Gagnon]

If you cannot depend on an existing e-mail application, then the only thing left to do is to write one yourself using something like CDO as an email transporter.
BTW the code in the FAQ I pointed to does not require the user to hit send and receive. There also 3rd party software you may be able to intergrate into your application, I just cannot think of one right now (perhaps someone else has a suggestion), I normally develop my applications or use existing software rather than looking for third parties.


Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[Mike Lewis]

John,

In addition to the advice Mike Gagnon has given you, you might want to look at:

- Blat. This is a DLL that performs all the basic email functionality, although it has no user interface. It is up to you to generate the email text and to display it as necessary. See

http://www.geocities.com/toby_korn/blat/

(that's quite an old URL; I'm not sure if it is still active).

- Mabry controls. This is quite a sophisticated third-party library that provides a lot of email functionality. See

http://www.mabry.com.

- There are plenty of other products that will do what you want, but the above are the two I know best.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[wgcs]

Take a look at the fox wiki, too; there is code there for sending emails and for retrieving them through POP:

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~GetPopEmail

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~AutomatedEmail

- Bill

Get the best answers to your questions -- See FAQ481-4875.

 

[ezpzjohn]

Thanks to Mike Gagnon for his comments. I wish I had the time to develop this part of the application myself but I have too many other coding jobs to do! Plus which I would prefer to be able to rely on someone else who has expertise in this field.

Thanks to Mike Lewis for the links: I will look at these over the coming weekend.

And thanks Bill for the Wiki links: there is a lot of information on the Wiki site that will keep me busy this weekend.

I will continue my search amongst the above links.

Thanks to all

John

 

[foxdbs]

JMail from

http://www.dimac.net

works well. (It is COM server.) However it is not a freeware to receive mails.

 

[ezpzjohn]

Thanks foxdbs.

I am currently evaluating SEE4FP from

http://www.marshallsoft.com.

The package appears to be exactly what I need and I was impressed that all the demo programs supplied worked!

I will also follow-up on your suggestion of JMail.

John

 

[awaresoft]

John,

Also check out Dart.com's dartmail COM control. I've had great success with this product and VFP 7 and VFP 8. This COM control supports both POP3 and IMAP4 methods for accessing a mailbox. If your email system supports an IMAP interface, you may find this a more efficient way than POP to programatically read and manage mail.

The dartmail product supports sending mail and works fine. I would also encourage you to check out Blat using

http://www.blat.net

URL (the other URL posted earlier is out-of-date). Blat is free, powerful, and reliable.

Malcolm

 

[ezpzjohn]

Thanks for the info Malcolm. I will check out the products you mention.

John