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emails made complicated!

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slobad23

slobad23

IS-IT--Management
Jun 30, 2006
90
GB
in html forums i asked if i could send a form as a whole and not just in plain text. i was told no. i then asked if i could at least use colour in the form emailed. again i was told no.

Each time however, i was told to talk to people in cgi. i was reluctant because i have not the for fainted idea of what this is all about. i have looked up cgi on a vast aray of websites but without much luck.

i do not know whether software needs installing, i do not know where i can find a website that tells me all i need to know from the VERY basics.

How hard can it be to email a form... and keep the format it was emailed in?

thank you in advance
 
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Hi

If I understand you correctly, you want to send a mail, but the message should be in HTML format instead of plaint text. Yes, that can be done. Can be done with any kind of application, not only with CGIs.

There are a lot of scripts, modules, packages, classes, whatever, for a lot of programming languages, so you only have to source, use, include, import, whatever, them into your application to make it able to send HTML mail.

Tell us what scripting/programming language(es) can you use on that server, so we can suggest you a solution.

For example you can use Mail::Message in Perl and Mail_Mime in PHP. But these are just examples. There are more on the web.

Feherke.
 
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i will give you a short example of what i have written...

<html>
<body>
<form action="MAILTO:jake.mills@djblaw.co.uk?subject=Cheque Request Form" method="post" enctype="text/plain">
<b>Required</b> <i>(please select an option below)</i>
<br>
<SELECT name='Acount Type'>
<option selected>Please Click Here and Select
<option>Office Account
<option>Client Account
<option>Office to Client Account
<option>Client to Office Account
</select>
<input type="submit" value="E-mail Cashier">
</form>
</body>
</html>

This is obviously very basic html. i don't know where to start with trying to get the form to be emailed in the format in which it has info enetered into it.

It is nice to have a beautiful form for someoneto enter the information into, but i would like the email that is recieved to contain the form and all the information. I dont want it to be a list of

name=john
surname=smith

do i need to adjust outlook or create cgi's (i am stuck on the cgi aspect). all i want is the form to be recieved via email as a form and not black text that is all clumped together.
 
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Hi

Forget that mailto: protocol in the [tt]action[/tt] attribute You should send the content of the form to a server-side script, which will format the data and send the mail. That way you do not expose your mail address to spam bots.

But you still not mention what programming languages you can use for CGI.

Feherke.
 
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i have been told that ASP would work the best with microsoft exchange server. once again i don't know how much truth there is to that as cgi is not a strong point. i didnt know anything about it until this morning. i was happy living in html bliss.

You mention that CGI is not needed - can you suggest some other ways, as well as perhaps a tutorial website (from the very basics) that could teach me ASP if that would be easier than the other programs you talk about.

" Can be done with any kind of application, not only with CGIs"

I am not really looking for anything special. simplicity is my friend.

Thank you in advance
 
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this may be a lot to ask, and you may say that i really need to read up on this a lot more before i try to do it. i just really think it shouldnt be too complicated to pick up. people tell me i can do it and they say "just use cgi script" but that really doesnt mean much to me.

The images that are created when entering information into the form within the browser (like the tables and input text areas... i want them to be visible within ms outlook when the email is recieved. i dont know what i should be writing in the cgi-bin and where and when and how - all these things.

Are there demonstrations of code that can achieve this effect? i dont want the form to just be line broken plain text.

i am recieving this

name=john
name=smith

i would prefer if the form was recieved in the email in teh same way it looks when the information is entered into it. other than "use cgi"... how do i do it?

thank you in advance
 
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ASP because of exchange is a red herring, and has nothing to do with the mail server. It's all about the webserver and how it's set up.

What webserver are you using? Apache, IIS, other ...
Is it configured to run PHP, ASP or Perl scripts?

HTH
--Paul

Paul
------------------------------------
Spend an hour a week on CPAN, helps cure all known programming ailments ;-)
 
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