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Emailing Form Input Using ASP
Everybody uses online forms these days, whether to get user feedback or to get orders. They present your visitors with a means to convey their message to you.
Most of the webmasters prefer using CGI scripts for processing and emailing form inputs. Such scripts are copiously available, mostly free, at various free-scripts resources on the Net. Most of CGI happens in Perl, so you gotta be in friendly terms with the scripting language in order to fine tune the form-handling script according to your own, special needs.
A better alternative is, using either ASP or PHP. Both scripting languages are easy to use and require less coding. In Perl, if you write a routine in 50 lines, the same routine can be written, in say, 10 lines in ASP.
In this article I'm going to tell you how to write an HTML-form handling script in ASP. This script does two things - it emails you the details entered by the visitor, and then it displays a thank you page. It also checks if the user has left a relevant field, here, email, blank.
There are basically two email handling objects used by the servers supporting the ASP capability, viz., CDONTS and SMTP. We'll see how both work.
First, let us make an HTML page that contains our form (note that every HTML tag is preceded by a dot so that some of the email clients don't throw up a tantrum - you'll have to remove them before implementing the code):
"form.html"
.
.
. This is a test page to run an ASP script that handles form input.
.
.
And now we write the ASP file that handles the required script to process the above form. Remarks are inserted using ' .
"emailform.asp"
.<% @Language = VBScript %>
.<% Option Explicit %>
.<% Response.Buffer = True %>
' You'll need the above command in case you want to show a "Thank you" page, as you'll need to "re-direct" to "thankyou.html".
.
.
. The form handling script.
.
.
.<%
Dim nName, eEmail, AllOk, bText, Mailer
AllOk = True
' We use AllOk to see whether it is Ok to proceed further or not. If AllOk
contains "False," we do not proceed. The use of AllOk here may seem needless here, but if there are many fields, it comes handy.
nName = Trim(Request.Form("name"))
eEmail = Trim(Request.Form("email))
If Len(eEmail) = 0 then
Response.Write "You cannot submit details without submitting your email. Please press the BACK button of your browser and try again."
AllOk = False
End If
If AllOk = True then
bText = "The visitor to the web site has entered the following details:" & Chr(13) & Chr(10) & Chr(13) & Chr(10)
' We use the combination of Chr(13) and Chr(10) to insert the line breaks.
bText = bText & "Visitor's Name: " & nName & Chr(13) & Chr(10)
bText = bText & "Visitor's Email: " & eEmail
' This section uses SMTP
' Sending the email to the webmaster.
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("SMTPsvg.Mailer)
Mailer.FromAddress = eEmail
Mailer.FromName = nName
Mailer.AddRecipient "Webmaster", "webmaster@yourdomain.com"
Mailer.RemoteHost = "mail.yourdomain.com"
Mailer.Subject = "Form submitted at your web site!"
Mailer.BodyText = bText
If Mailer.SendMail then
Response.Redirect "thankyou.html"
Else
Response.Redirect "error.html"
End If
Set Mailer = nothing
' This section uses CDONTS
' Sending the email to the webmaster.
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
Mailer.From = eEmail
Mailer.To = "webmaster@yourdomain.com"
Mailer.Subject = Form submitted at your web site!"
Mailer.Body = bText
If Mailer.Send then
Response.Redirect "thankyou.html"
Else
Response.Redirect "error.html"
End If
Set Mailer = nothing
End If
.%>
I have demonstrated both CDONTS and SMTP, but you have to use only one. You'll have to ask your web host what to use.
As usual, if you have a doubt, you can write to me at amrit@bytesworth.com.
All the best.
About the Author
Amrit Hallan is a freelance web designer. For all web site
development and web promotion needs, you can get in touch with
him at http://www.bytesworth.com. For more such articles,
visit http://www.bytesworth.com/articles and
http://www.bytesworth.com/learn You can subscribe to his
newsletter [BYTESWORTH REACHOUT] on Web Designing Tips & Tricks
by sending a blank email at bytesworth-subscribe@topica.com
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