How to: "Email article to a Friend"

Anon

I would like to add this functionality to my website using PHP.

I have only a vague idea of where to start (using forms) but I don't know how to set up the code so it knows what page to print and what content to print (just text).

I've searched the web and about 10 different php and script sites with no luck.

Can someone provide a brief description of the tasks/functions I need to take and/or point me to a tutorial or article that explains how to do this using php?

I've found several articles/tutorials that use Perl but I'd really like to use php.

Thank you! - Shawna

laurabrandt

Actually, this is pretty easy. I use MySQL. What I did was to pass the ArticleID to the email to friend page and put it as a hidden tag in my form.

when they click on http://something.com/email.php?id=6 , number "6" is passed as the id:

<FORM ACTION="<?php echo($PHP_SELF); ?>" METHOD=POST>
<P>Email this Article to a Friend:<BR>

<P>Article URL:
<?php echo(" <INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=articleid VALUE=$id>"); ?>

<P>Your Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="sendername" SIZE=20><BR>
Your Email: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="senderemail" SIZE=20><BR>
Your Friend's Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="recipientname" SIZE=20><BR>
Your Friend's Email: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="recipientemail" SIZE=20><BR>
Message to your friend: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="message" SIZE=20><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME="submit" VALUE="SUBMIT"></P>
</FORM>

When the form is submitted, it will fetch the relevant data from the MySQL database based on the ArticleID that is being passed:

<?php
if ($submit):
fetch all details based on ID=$articleid
?>

And, then after that, just send the email using the mail function. Put in the message "This page can be found at $baseurl/article.php?id=$articleid."

This message only sends out the URL of the article. However, if you want to send out the whole content of the page, you need to fetch the content from the database.

Hope this helps.

Laura Brandt

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Anon

Thanks Laura - your response is a huge help. The website I work on also uses a mysql database to generate about 80% of it's webpages so this will definitely help me!

Of course, it's really the other 20% (static pages) for which I'm trying to create the email option. Ideally, I need to be able to read the URL (I think) and cut it down to the file name to access it (Perl does this I think) and then either eliminate html tags to access just text to throw in the mail() function or ...
access the printable version of the page and print just text with no graphics.

Any other ideas? suggestions?

Thank you, Shawna

laurabrandt

Hmmm .. the one that I'm going to tell you is NOT PHP solution, but if you don't mind using CGI script, you can check out this link

http://willmaster.com/master/webpagemailer/index.shtml

Great script I must say =)

Hope this helps (again).

Laura Brandt

--
Aletia Hosting - Full-Featured, Superfast Web Hosting
PHP, MySQL, Perl, Multiple domain support and more.
200MB + 10GB Transfer at $9.95/mth
http://AletiaHosting.com - AIM: AletiaSales

Anon

Laura, this cgi script looks like it's just what I need! I've had no luck trying to find php code that already exists for this function. I'm going to try the cgi script and hopefully it'll meet my short-term needs so I can focus on playing around more with php.

Thank you!

Shawna