Published: Sunday, November 22, 1998
Sending Emails in ASP using CDO
| For More Information on Sending Email via ASP Pages... |
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For more information on sending emails through an ASP page, be sure to check out the
Email FAQ Category
at ASPFAQs.com. There you will find FAQs
describing how to receive email from POP accounts, how to validate user-entered email
addresses, how to send HTML-formatted emails, etc.
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Sending email through Active Server Pages is not a difficult task. All
you need is love. No, wait; all you need is the Collaborative Data
Object, which ships with NT Option Pack 4. To make sure you have it
installed, go to Start / Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs / NT Option
Pack 4, and see if the SMTP Piece has been installed. If it is *not*
installed, you will get an error when you try to run some of the code
shown below (the error will read something like, "Invalid class string").
To create an instance of a CDO object in your ASP code, it is as simple
as:
<%
Dim objCDO
Set objCDO = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
%>
Now you're ready to send those emails off! CDONTS.NewMail has a few
obvious, easy to use properties and methods. Let's look at some code:
<%
' This code assumes the above CDO
'instantiation code is included
objCDO.To = "mitchell@4guysfromrolla.com"
objCDO.From = "gates@microsoft.com"
objCDO.cc = "barksdale@netscape.com,jobs@apple.com"
Dim txtSubject
txtSubject = "Hello Scott! We were wanting your advice on
some programming issues. Please come to
Redmond at your earliest convenience for a
very fat check!"
objCDO.Subject = "Attn: Scott, we need you!!"
objCDO.Body = txtSubject
objCDO.Send
%>
That's all there is to it. The properties are hopefully fairly obvious.
In the above code an email is being sent to mitchelL@4guysfromrolla.com
from gates@microsoft.com, and being CC'ed to barksdale@netscape.com and
jobs@apple.com. The subject is simply the email message. The send method
is what officially dispatches the email (don't forget this, or your email
won't go anywhere!!)
CDO is fairly powerful (and bloated). You can send attachments, send to
group lists, send schedules (like in Outlook).
I also have written an article which was published on 15Seconds.com
dealing with uses of the CDO object. In the article (available through this URL) I discuss
marketing through personalized emailing. The article outlines a good use
for the CDO object.
Let's examine some of the other features of CDO. Below is a snippet of
code which displays some of CDO's extraneous features:
<%
objCDO.To = "someone@xyz.com (John Doe)"
objCDO.From = "me@abc.com (Jane Doe)"
objCDO.bcc = "janedoe@aol.com" 'Blind cc
objCDO.Subject = "My Resume, per Request"
objCDO.Body = "Hello John. Here is a copy of my
resume"
objCDO.Importance = 2 'High importance!
objCDO.AttachFile "\\server\jane\resume.doc","Resume.doc"
objCDO.Send 'Send off the email!
'Cleanup
Set objCDO = Nothing
%>
[View a live demo]
If the file specified by the AttachFile method does not exist, you
will receive an Unspecified Error error message. For more information
on sending attachments be sure to read: How
do you send email attachments via an ASP page?
As you can see, I've introduced two new properties and a new method. Bcc
is for blind carbon copying. If you send an email "to" someone, and blind
carbon copy someone, the person who receives the email doesn't know that
the message was carbon copied to those on the bcc list. I also used the
Importance property, which takes three values:
0 - Low
1 - Normal
2 - High
It defaults to 1, Normal, if not explicitly set. You'll also note that
for the email addresses I wrote something to the effect of:
"emailaddress@something.com (Name)" Whatever you put in parenthesis after
the email address will appear as the name of the person who sent the
email. So rather than seeing the email message from me@abc.com, John Doe
will see that it was from Jane Doe.
The new method introduces is the AttachFile method. This method, as its
name suggests, attaches a file to the email being sent. It takes up to
three parameters, but let's just discuss the first two. The first
parameter is the file you want to attach. In this example I attached
\\server\jane\resume.doc. The second parameter is optional, and it
specifies what you want the name to be in the email message. Here you can
pick some prettier name (like "Jane's Nifty Resume" if you like) than the
full file name. I just named it "Resume.doc".
Getting a Permission Denied Error?
Depending on the security settings on the Web server you may receive a permission denied
error when executing the Send method. If this is the case check to make sure
that the IUSR_MachineName has Full Control permissions on the mail root
directories (usually C:\InetPub\mailroot\). (For example, if your Web server's
name is Bob, ensure that IUSR_Bob has these permissions.)
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Happy Programming!
