Cgiware Advanced Programming

Sunday, July 6, 12:37:48 AM CDT

Aspmailer

What is aspmailer?

Requirements

Installing aspmailer

Configurating the form

Configurating the script

Download the script

Troubleshooting

What is aspmailer?

Aspmailer is a popular, straightforward form mailer for Windows with an eye towards secure behavior and some useful output formatting. Your visitors fill out the form and submit it. From there, the form data is emailed to an address you designate within the asp script. You can use it with any form (exception made of file uploads), so it's quite flexible as well. It will not work on more recent Windows servers, such as 2000 or 2003. We're in the process of coding an updated asp.NET version that will work with the latest Windows.

Aspmailer's requirements

If you're hosted (or hosting) on an Windows NT server with iis 4.0 or higher and asp 2.0 or higher, you can use this script rather than tgmail.pl. In fact, this one is the better choice nowadays, since it doesn't need to connect to a friendly mail relay to do its job, and doesn't require the overhead associated with running perl scripts.

If you aren't sure if your system supports this script, install it and run it. It checks whether the scripting engine version is correct and whether or not the required components are available. While this version uses components that are included with asp 2.0, your host system administrators can choose which components are available to users.

How to install aspmailer

Unpack the zip file using either Winzip or Pkzip. Upload aspmailer.asp to your cgi-bin directory, or any directory where active server pages can be executed. Upload the form (mailform.html) to wherever you want it to be accessible.

How to configurate the mailer form

Mailform.html is just a sample form. You can customize it or use any existing form, but either way make sure the form "action" attribute points to the correct location of the asp script (Ex: action="/cgi-bin/aspmailer.asp").

In the form itself, you can optionally add a few hidden items:

TGrequire: This hidden input's value can contain a list of the form items you want to force user input for. Each item of the list should be the exact input name. Use commas (',') to separate the list items.

<input type="hidden" name="TGrequire" value="name,address,city">

In the example above, this would cause the asp script to check the inputs named "name","address", and "city", and return an error if any was empty.

TGorder: This hidden input allows you to tell the asp script how to sort the form inputs in the email. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="TGorder" value="name,address,city">

In the example above, this would cause the asp script to send a letter with the input named "name" on the first line, the input named "address" on the second line, and "city" on the third line. For example, a user submitted the form in the previous example, the letter sent would be structured like this...

name=Bob Jones address=10 Nowhere Street city=NowhereVille

Note that if you do give TGorder a value, only the form items it lists will be sent, the rest being discarded.

TGsubject: This hidden input allows you to tell the asp script what to put on the Subject line of the email. If you use several different forms, having a different TGsubject value allows you to quickly identify which form was submitted. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="TGsubject" value="Form 1 Submitted">

The subject can also be set within the script itself. See "How to configurate the script" section for more details.

TGredirect: This hidden input allows you to tell the asp script to redirect browsers to a page of your choice upon a successful form submittal. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="TGredirect" value="/thanku.html">

In the above example, browsers will be redirected to a page in the root directory of your domain, called "thanku.html". A redirect can also be set within the script itself. See "How to configurate the script" section for more details.

How to configurate the script

Typically, an asp file is a combination of a scripting language and html. In the case of aspmailer.asp, the scripting language is VBscript. You can add html to it between the comments tags "Put your html here".

Some html in aspmailer.asp will only appear if an error occurs, while other html will only appear if a form submission is successful. Additionally, if a form submission is successful, the can be redirected to the url contained in the TGredirect hidden input (see previous section), or the strRedirect variable (see further on). Otherwise, html in the script file itself will be fed back to the browser.

There are few variables you can assign values to inside aspmailer.asp. You'll find these variables clearly marked and commented in the script itself.
strRcpt: This one is mandatory. It must be set to the email address that will receive the form data. For example, if you want the data sent to bob@gdghjk.com, you would give it the value:

strRcpt = "bob@gdghjk.com"

strFromVar: This optional variable allows you to select a form input by name as the return address of the message. This makes it possible for you to receive the form data and reply immediately to the true sender's address. For example, if your form contains a variable called email, you can use its value as the reply-to address by setting strFromVar as follows:

strFromVar = "email"

strDefFrom: This is the default "From" address. It is required, as no message should be sent without an originating address. It can be a fake address, but it should have valid syntax or it will trigger a runtime error.

strDefSubject: This variable is optional. If TGsubject isn't set in the form, strDefSubject's value will be used as the subject line instead. The advantage of using TGsubject is that you can have many different forms that caould be identified by their subject.

strRedirect: This variable is optional. If TGredirect isn't set in the form, strRedirect's value will be used as the url the browser will be sent to if a submission is successful.

Download the script

Click on the button below to download the zip file containing aspmailer.asp, a sample form and these instructions in plain text. Stay tuned to Cgiware for enhancements in future versions.

Download aspmailer

Troubleshooting

If, when you invoke aspmailer from your site, you get this cryptic message:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01ad' 

ActiveX component can't create object: 'CreateObject' 

/aspmailer.asp, line 14

It happens because your host doesn't have the CDONTS.dll library installed or listed in the Registry. That library contains the code that creates the NewMail object we need to create and send messages. You can't use aspmailer.asp until they install it. Some hosts prefer to use third party components rather than those that ship with NT, alas.

If you aren't technically inclined or don't run your own NT server, it might be easier for you to get a mailer script that works with your host system's setup.