World Wide Web Resources at CMC -- Mailto

The following documentation is based on Brandon Gillispie's original docs on his program Mailto, a simple but flexible WWW Email gateway.

To use this gateway, all you need to do is include something like the following in your web page:

<form METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-bin/mailto">

Fill out the following to send your comments:</br>

<input name="recip" value="yourmail" type="hidden">
<input name="subj" value="Web Page Response" type="hidden">
<input name="followup-page" value="/www/index.html" type="hidden">
From: <input name="from">
Comments: <input name="body">
<input type="submit" value="Submit request"> <input type=reset>
</form>

The end result will look like this:

Note that any other variable (<input> in HTML) will also be sent in the mail. This allows you to do radio boxes, pulldowns, or any other form submission simply.

The fields which are recognized by Mailto are:

recip

This field specifies the recipient of the message. It is required. If the recipient of mailto is not in mailto.conf and VALID_RECIP is defined Mailto will not send the message.

subj

This field specifies the subject for the message. It is not required.

from

The user's email who is sending the message. This is required if REQUIRE_FROM is defined in mailto.conf. No validation is performed on the value so it is easy to forge messages (the host they are at is recorded in the message).

name

The user's name. This is not required, but is nice.

followup-page

The page which Mailto should point the user to after submitting the form. If this value exists Mailto will return them to that page after it is completed. If followup-page is undefined Mailto will echo the message.

return

This is new to version 1.6 in that it does not automatically redirect the user. Instead it prints the default output message, with a comment at the bottom of the page stating "Go Back," with the hyperlink pointing to the specified value of return. If the value for return is undefined, it will use the HTTP_REFERER page (i.e. which page activated the form) as the return location.

body

This is the actual body of the message.

Copyright © 1997-2008 Emerald People's Utility District

24/7 Technical Support:
Eugene/Springfield Area: 541-344-8283
Within Oregon: 877-282-3523
Outside Oregon: 800-731-4871
Or email support@cmc.net