Getting User Input via Email

[Tim M]

Hi

Does anyone know if its possible to create and email HTML
forms. Email recipients would then input information to
these forms in the same way that they would on a web
page. Pressing the submit button would mail the form
back, after which it would be separately submitted to an
ASP page on the web server for processing.

The main reason for this is so we don't have all the
issues associated with firewalls and security to deal
with. Our corporate mail servers will strip out viruses
so that not a problem.

Thanks in Advance
Tim

 

[Ray at]

It all depends on the mail client that the recipient is using. If you
e-mail someone who's using PINE, that certainly won't work. Just send a
link and use a web page. I know this is not what you want to do, but trying
to use e-mail for such purposes would only generate problems.

Ray at work

 

[Phillip Windell]

Tim,
First, I agree with Ray,....but I think you misunderstand a few
things that could bite you later.

If the user clicks a "submit" button in a web form in an email it is
not going to send the email. It is going to post the data to the
"target" of the form the same way it would if done in a browser to
begin with,...there is no difference. The e-mail client's view/edit
window effectively just becomes a "browser" when the email is in HTML
format.

Firewalls & Security
There are no real issues with Forms & ASP when using Firewalls.
The only thing sent from the client is the "data" from the form which
is generally just text. The only thing received by the client is the
resulting html page generated after the submit. Everything else runs
only on the web server,...that's what ASP is all about, it is all
server-side.


--

Phillip Windell [CCNA, MVP, MCP]
(e-mail address removed)
WAND-TV (ABC Affiliate)
www.wandtv.com