This application is a generic HTML form E-mailer that will take the input submitted to it, combine it with a specified html page, and E-mail the results to the given recipients. To allow for users with both advanced and primitive mail clients, the results can be sent as either text or html. Control of how the application works is described by the html 'form' (as in <form>) fields passed to it. Only 2 fields, "mailto" and "replyto", representing the recipient and sender respectively, are required. All other fields are optional. Many have defaults.
It is fairly important to recognize the process of creating the message to send to the user to fully exploit this application. The message is created by two pieces. The first piece is an html page, referred to as the html source page. The second piece is the form field data. These form fields are the data the user entered before hitting the submit button. The html source page does not have to be the same page that the user entered their data on. Therefore we can present one view to the user with clear instructions and lengthy detail and another completely different view with different instructions or formatting for the recipients. As long as the form field names match up (case sensitive) from one html page to the next, the data will make the transition.
Many of the form fields below can be used to customize the answer page presented to the html page user after sending the form. The default consists of a generic reply and a link to return the user to UD's home page.
The best way to learn to use this application is through the
tutorial.
Also available is an
HTML form bouncer.
HTML Command Form Fields
All command form fields listed below, except "X-Mailto-" are case insensitive.
So "SuBJeCt" and "subject" are the same field to the purposes of this
application.
The form fields can be broken into three sections
| Email Configuration | ||||
| Field Name | Required | Default Value | Possible Values | Short Description |
| mailto | Yes | None | Valid e-mail address* | Form recipient |
| replyto | Yes | None | Valid e-mail address* | Form sender |
| carbon_replyto | No | 'no' | 'yes' or 'no' | Have a carbon copy sent to the 'replyto' field |
| cc or cc[1-10] | No | None | Valid e-mail address* | Carbon copy recipient(s) |
| bcc or bcc[1-10] | No | None | Valid e-mail address* | Blind carbon copy recipient(s) |
| subject | No | 'Routed html form' | any short text message | Subject line of E-mailed message |
| mailformat | No | 'text' | 'text' or 'html' | Format of mailed message, text or html |
| X-Mailto- | No | None | rfc788 header text | Embed informational headers in mail message |
| serverinfo | No | 'no' | 'yes' or 'no' | info for developers tacked onto end of email |
| Reply Configuration | ||||
| Field Name | Required | Default Value | Possible Values | Short Description |
| reply | No | 'Thank You' | escaped html text | Text displayed upon successful completion of E-mail |
| returnpage | No | 'http://www.udel.edu/' | URL or escaped html text | Suppressed answer -> URL otherwise -> html to display |
| suppress | No | None | any combination of a) 'answer' b) 'returnpage' c) 'mailto' |
Suppress (format) the reply sent to the submitter |
| Misc Configuration | ||||
| Field Name | Required | Default Value | Possible Values | Short Description |
| html_source | Yes | Refering URL | fully qualified URL | URL of the html source page to be used |
| allow_defaults or only_sub_if_passed |
No | 'no' | 'y'/'yes' or 'no' | If a different source page is used, this will allow default values on that page to come through |
| dont_email | No | 'no' | 'yes' or 'no' | For use while testing the reply. If 'yes' no emails will be sent. |
|
This field specifies the form recipient
The sender of the message, sometimes a hidden field, but most of the time will be input by the user of the page.
If 'yes', will send a carbon copy of the message to the email address in the replyto field.
This field takes advantage of the carbon copy (Cc:) feature available in the sendmail protocol (rfc788). 'cc1' through 'cc10', as well as any number of 'cc' fields are available for sending carbon copies.
This field takes advantage of the blind carbon copy (Bcc:) feature available in the sendmail protocol (rfc788). 'bcc1' through 'bcc10', as well as any number of 'bcc' fields are available for sending blind carbon copies.
The subject of a mailed message.
Specifies if a form is to be returned as an html file or as a plain text file. Defaults to text.
Any field name beginning with "X-Mailto-" will be passed as a header to the sendmail program. These fields will be listed below "Subject:", "From:", "To:", etc. in the resulting mail message. The value for this field must be text that won't goof up sendmail (see rfc788).
Including this field with a value of 'yes' will result in some server information useful to a developer being attached to the bottom of the mail message.
|
Text/html reply to display on the user's web browser.
If 'answer' is suppressed, will bring up the 'returnpage' in the users browser. Otherwise will just display the text.
After a form has been submitted, the program will by default display an acknowledgement. 'Suppress' can be used to format this acknowledgement.
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The purpose of the application is to merge data input by a user on an html form with an html source page and E-mail the results to the specified individual(s).
If this field is anything but 'no', the application will only replace/modify html fields if the corrosponding field has been submitted by the user. Thus default values on a different source file can pass through.
If this field is 'yes', the application will not send any emails. This is primarily used by programmers debugging the application and for testing the reply functionality. Note: the mailto and replyto fields will not be required and no email addresses will be verified.