First, to be clear off the top: there are lots of email-related tuts dealing with CSV files. However, all the ones I’ve seen are about an email form writing to a CSV file so that the user’s info can go in a database. As helpful as that is, that’s not what I’m looking for.
THE ISSUE
Here’s the thing. I’m going to have a web page giving email contact info for probably a hundred recipients. Due to spam issues, I obviously don’t want to simply hard-code email addresses into the page; due to the sheer number as well as page organization issues, I also don’t want to create a dropdown form from which the user can select the proper recipient.
It has been suggested to me that the best bet would be to create a link, e.g. a href=“contactform.php?id=123”>Email [Name here]</a>, and in turn have the script process the ID from a database. Someone else suggested keeping things simple with a CSV file rather than using e.g. MySQL.
That sounds good to me, as all my work with databases has been at arm’s length, and my coding prowess is really HTML and CSS. I do, however, use a modified form of one of the popular formmail scripts, as I’m decent with logically copying and pasting when I need to.
All that said, I would still need to know how to get the formmail script to call the CSV file and negotiate the fields so that it would send the email (and to the appropriate recipient).
Is there anyone here who can give me a headstart with this? My various attempts at searching Google indicate to me I’m probably not working with the right search terms to get the answer.
TIA