semi-OT: can Rev pre-populate data on a web form?

[Chris Sheffield]

Just wanted to write and say thanks to Trevor, Ben, and Jim. Using the  
web form is working great. I just needed a little push in the right  
direction, and I got it here. So thanks for the suggestions.

Chris

On Sep 5, 2008, at 3:28 AM, Ben Rubinstein wrote:

> Chris Sheffield wrote:
>> So my main question is, can Rev send data to a web form like this  
>> in such a way that whatever fields we specify will be populated  
>> when the browser/form opens? Not sure if something like this is  
>> even possible. I haven't done enough web development to know. Is  
>> some special JavaScript required to accomplish this? In thinking  
>> this through a little more, if we have a web form that's already  
>> set up to send an email, can't I take advantage of that in Rev by  
>> creating my own form and then sending the data straight to the cgi  
>> behind the form? Once again, I haven't done much web dev, so I may  
>> not even know what I'm talking about. :-)
>>
>> If anyone can help or can offer any other suggestions for how to
>> accomplish something similar, it'd be much appreciated.
>
>
> If I've understood your request correctly, you really want a Rev  
> stack to
> collect some information from the user, and have it arrive at your  
> server in
> the form of an email.  There's a simple way to get what you want, I  
> think.
>
> Using the SMTP libraries should make this possible, but has some  
> issues, in
> particular your rev stack then needs to know the address of a mail  
> server it
> can use from within the user's network to send email.  But if you  
> have a web
> form on your server that's successfully sending email where you want  
> it,
> there's no need to open a user's browser to view it.  Instead, Rev can
> effectively be that web form.
>
> (Apologies if what follows is teaching my granny to suck eggs.) If  
> you look at
> the source of the web page, it will contain a "form" element with an  
> action
> and a method.  The action is the address of a server-side resource  
> (a script
> etc) which receives the values entered into the form and processes  
> it, in this
> case by sending an email.  The method is either POST or GET.  If  
> it's GET,
> then the resource expects the values in the URL string, eg if I fill  
> in this
> simple form
>
> 	<form method="GET" action="formmail.cgi">
> 		<input name="first" type="text">
> 		<input name="last" type="text">
> 		<input type="submit" />
> 	</form>
>
> my browser will next fetch a URL like this:
>  ...../formmail.cgi?first=Ben&last=Rubinstein
>
> (the first part of the URL being constructed based on the URL of the  
> page
> holding the form, adjusted by the 'action' of the form.)
>
> Lecture over; the point is that executing
>
> 	put "...../formmail.cgi?first=Ben&last=Rubinstein" into tURL
> 	get URL tURL
>
> or perhaps more likely
> 	put "...../formmail.cgi" into tScriptURL
> 	put tScriptURL \
>            & "?first=" & tFirstName \
> 	    & "&last=" & tLastName \
> 	    into tURL
> 	get URL tURL
>
>
>
> in your Rev stack will have exactly* the same effect on the  
> 'formmail.cgi'
> resource as the user entering those details into their browser.  At  
> this point
> Rev is acting like a browser, making a request of the web server.   
> So no need
> to open an actual browser.
>
> If the form uses the POST method instead, then it's only slightly more
> complicated.  Instead of get URL, you need to use the "post"  
> command, which
> will look something more like this:
>
> 	put libURLformData("first", tFirstName, "last", tLastName) into tData
> 	post tData to tScriptURL
>
> There will be a few complications along the way; you should read the
> (splending new in 3.0) docs, check out functions like URLencode, and  
> above
> all, test.  But either way, given that you have the web form  
> already, this is
> probably the simplest route to achieve what you want.
>
> HTH,
>
> - Ben
>
>
> *pedants please leave now
>
>
>
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--
Chris Sheffield
Read Naturally, Inc.
www.readnaturally.com