Sending email advice

[Jon Crain]

It appears that there are two separate ways of sending emails from CWP and I'm looking for advice on which way I should use, PHP email or performing a FileMaker script to send the email.

The data I need to send needs to be secure (i.e. not found on the web page) because I'm using a web form to send a lock combinations.

PHP seems the easiest but it has two drawbacks...

1) I would have to figure out the PHP session/cookies or encrypting issues and..

2) If a person needs multiple combos, they would need to send two emails. (which also may be solved with better php skills.

The other option would be to have FM do the email creation and sending. I would need to pass a script variable, which from what I've read doesn't really work. And its a little hazy with the entire process, here's what I understand it now as. Fill in the holes as needed....

1) I start with a found set from a CWP page of a list of lockers for a given person.

2) If they need their combos they hit a submit button to request them by email. (the button is somehow tied into the newPerformScriptCommand, but how?)

newPerformScriptCommand ($Lockers, $GetCombo, [$UserID])

3) Filemaker then performs the script which finds all the combos for the lockers owned by the person and automatically sends an email to the email we have on file for that person. (i.e. no one can have an email sent to any account, but only the account tied to the record).

4) Email is sent.

The holes are...

how does an anchor tag call a script?

will FMSA automatically send an email or what needs to be configured to do so?

jon

[javierinSFO]

Jon,

I would suggest you do it in PHP and utilize a PHP Mailer Class to allow you to have the email be easier to format, merge with your FileMaker fields, sent by an Email account that might require authentication, etc.

I am not sure why you are getting caught up with the security here unless you want the PHP form to be in an encrypted part of your site like SSL. That is a whole different discussion as it requires you purchase and install an SSL certificate from GeoTrust of Verisign on your webserver. What that buys you in users like to type any private data in web pages that read Https.

If that https folder exist, then you are just dropping your form in that directory so that the data is encrypted much like all the banks and online stores do it.

There are several PHP mailer classes out there but I use PHP Mailer by Brent R. Matzelle. It's easy and even supports connecting to your email server via SSL I believe. Or check out

htmlMimeMail5 package (http://www.phpguru.org/

You then would indeed do a find command in FileMaker PHP

and either construct an email with all his/her lockers and combinations or generate a separate email for each locker.

Either way, it will depend on your PHP skills but definitely

not too difficult.

Regards,

Javier

It appears that there are two separate ways of sending emails from CWP and I'm looking for advice on which way I should use, PHP email or performing a FileMaker script to send the email.

The data I need to send needs to be secure (i.e. not found on the web page) because I'm using a web form to send a lock combinations.

PHP seems the easiest but it has two drawbacks...

1) I would have to figure out the PHP session/cookies or encrypting issues and..

2) If a person needs multiple combos, they would need to send two emails. (which also may be solved with better php skills.

The other option would be to have FM do the email creation and sending. I would need to pass a script variable, which from what I've read doesn't really work. And its a little hazy with the entire process, here's what I understand it now as. Fill in the holes as needed....

1) I start with a found set from a CWP page of a list of lockers for a given person.

2) If they need their combos they hit a submit button to request them by email. (the button is somehow tied into the newPerformScriptCommand, but how?)

newPerformScriptCommand ($Lockers, $GetCombo, [$UserID])

3) Filemaker then performs the script which finds all the combos for the lockers owned by the person and automatically sends an email to the email we have on file for that person. (i.e. no one can have an email sent to any account, but only the account tied to the record).

4) Email is sent.

The holes are...

how does an anchor tag call a script?

will FMSA automatically send an email or what needs to be configured to do so?

jon

[Genx]

... or you could just use mail()...