Is it possible for a visitor to a page to email a certain part of a page to a friend

[Dez]

Scenario :

You have a page where a certain section of that page has text that changes every day at midnight.

A visitor to that website page sees that particular changing comment and would like to email that text to a friend of theirs. (Without doing any copying and pasting).

Example of the table layout below.

Any ideas where to start please?

Any help very much appreciated.

Dez.

<table>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>Changing text here</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>

[AutisticCuckoo]

Not solely with HTML. Something like this would best be done with a server-side language (PHP, JSP, ASP, .NET, ...).

[Dez]

Many thanks - I'll just hop over to the PHP section now.

Dez.

[markbrown4]

The changing text will be in a database I am guessing..

Create a form with an email address field at very least.
Submit to a php script the picks up the email_address submitted by the form and using the mail() function you send the text from the db.

[Dez]

Not solely with HTML. Something like this would best be done with a server-side language (PHP, JSP, ASP, .NET, ...).

Hey . . . . You're not following me, are you Tommy ?

Dez.

[Dez]

The changing text will be in a database I am guessing..

Create a form with an email address field at very least.
Submit to a php script the picks up the email_address submitted by the form and using the mail() function you send the text from the db.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the input - it's appreciated.

The changing text comes from me, once a day it is changed by me.

Bearing that in mind Mark, would you still suggest the same thing please ?

Dez.

[elduderino]

Hi,

So how do you change the text? By hand? So its a static html page and you literally change the text and then re-upload the file? If this is the case it makes things a bit more complicated...it would be easier if that text was being pulled from a database...then you could take the root that markbrown suggested.

let us know as there are solutions!

[markbrown4]

Hi,

You can have your text in a .txt file if you would like.
It doesn't really matter where the text is as long as it's in it's own location and not embedded into the page.

You could then use a Server Side Inlcude (SSI) to put the contents of the file into the page, you can also read the contents of the file from PHP and mail them when you submit an email address.

[Dez]

Many thanks for coming back to me on this.

It's definitely embedded into the page.

Dez.

[spikeZ]

thinking outload here but if you gave the table an id and then used javascript to get the id's contents using getElementById, It might be possible to then send that content to a processing page..........

hmmm

[Dez]

thinking outload here but if you gave the table an id and then used javascript to get the id's contents using getElementById, It might be possible to then send that content to a processing page..........

hmmm

Sounds good Spike - but as there would be other text in other cells not needed for this, would it be able to get the text from an individual cell ?

Or, I have been thinking of putting the text in a text file and then, depending on the date, a particular section of text from that text file would automagically be entered into the page, but how could it be done, to ensure that the person emailing, gets that same particular text from that text file please ?

The helps appreciated.

Dez.

[spikeZ]

OK have a look at this:

<?php
    print_r($_POST);
?>


<script type="text/javascript">

    function getText() {
        
        var myText = document.getElementById("testText").innerHTML;
        document.emailToFriend.bodyContent.value = myText;
        // alert(myText);
        
    }

</script>

<table>
    <tr>
        <td id="testText">my text goes here</td>
    </tr>
</table>
<form name="emailToFriend" id="emailToFriend" action="" method="post" />
    <input type="text" name="emailAddress" /><br />
    <input type="hidden" name="bodyContent" />
    <input type="submit" name="test" value="getText" onclick="javascript:getText();" />
</form>

It grabs the contents of the table cell with the id testText and puts it into the hidden field of the form. That is then sent through the form as a POST variable which you can then use to email it to the specified address.

You could then alter the function slightly to allow any cell with an id to be emailed

Is that what you were after?

[spikeZ]

for your second point about getting the data to the page, personally I would use a database to hold your content and display whichever part you need.
With the function above it takes exactly what is on the screen and send that so whatever you have displayed on a specific day/time is what will be sent.

[Raju Gautam]

Does the following shows some example??

//store this static html and get it from the same
$html = "<table>
                <tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
                <tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>[CHANGING_TEXT]</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
                <tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
                </table>";

//Lets supppose you have your changing text here.
$changingtext = "Something goes here...";

$toemail = $_POST['useremailid']; //user's email id
$subject = "subject goes here";
$headers = "some header information";

$hody = str_replace($changingtext, $html, $html);

# then send it to the email
@mail($toemail, $subject, $body, $headers); 

The spikez's idea also the great if you can follow it. Before submitting the form you can get some element's innerHTML and store it in some form element. Then post and you can get it with $_POST as other usual text values and send it to the mail.

Does this make sense??

[spikeZ]

mooving this on slightly you can also amend the script to send different portions of the page, ie different cells....

<?php
    print_r($_POST);
?>


<script type="text/javascript">

    function getText(id) {
        
        var myText = document.getElementById(id).innerHTML;
        document.emailToFriend.bodyContent.value += myText +'|';
        document.getElementById(id).style.color="#FF0000"
        
        
    }

</script>

<table>
    <tr>
        <td id="testText" onclick="getText('testText');" style="cursor:hand">my text goes here</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="testText2" onclick="getText('testText2');" style="cursor:hand">my text goes here2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="testText3" onclick="getText('testText3');" style="cursor:hand">my text goes here3</td>
    </tr>    
</table>
<form name="emailToFriend" id="emailToFriend" action="" method="post" />
    <input type="text" name="emailAddress" /><br />
    <input type="hidden" name="bodyContent" />
    <input type="submit" name="test" value="getText" />
</form>

creates a pipe | delimited file which can be exploded to get the content

Edit:


oh and the text turns red when you click it

[Raju Gautam]

I am 100&#37; agree with your code which is very simple and easy to learn/follow. I am impressed with the idea.

[spikeZ]

Thank you rajug

[Dez]

Many thanks to all who helped on this, especially to SpikeZ and Mark - problem now solved.

The helps been very much appreciated.

Dez.

[spikeZ]

No worries Dez
Just for the benefit of anyone else looking for a similar solution, what did you do in the end to solve the problem?

[Dez]

Just using what you kindly mentioned in post 15.

Thanks again.

Dez.

[spikeZ]

Thanks Dez for clarifying that