shephesa2000 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi there, I am really new at this whole PERL thing and could really use some more experienced advice. I am busy developing web pages and am using 2 perl documents (presendmail.pl and sendmail.pl). These docs allow me to fill out a form and then click a submit button and the form will send. My problem is that when you receive one of these emails and you want to reply, you can click reply but the email address of the person who sent it to you is not put in the "To" field. Obviously this causes a problem with those people who find computers terrifying. I am using Outlook. As I mentioned I am a beginner, but I do not think that there is any code anywhere that gets the email address of the person who fills out the form. I thought that maybe I would have to have another section in my form that asked for an email address but I am not sure. My perl docs are linked to .htm files....if that helps anything. Hope anyone can help me (let alone understand what I am typing) Thank you

The follwoing code is the presendmail.pl file

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# The first line of the file is unnecessary for the Novonyx servers, b
+ut is necessary for other
# web servers, leave it in to keep the code portable.

################################
# Necessary Fields in HTML Form:
# SendersDepartment = specifies the remote users department
# sendername = specifies the remote users real identity
# subject = the subject line that will appear in your email
# link1 = the url for the link, relative to your web entry point
#         (ie link1="/index.html")
# link2 = the text that will be printed for the link back on the retur
+n html page
#         (ie link2="Back to Wild Things Photography Home")

# The first thing that must be printed out to a web page is the follow
+ing line. It doesn't
#   actually print, but it tells the web server what format you will b
+e sending it from this
#   program
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

# Sendmail is saved as a separate program, so in order to use it, it m
+ust be "required"
require("sendmail.pl");

# If the requestMethod is "POST", the data will be read from STDIN,
#   if "GET" it will be read from the URL line
$requestMethod = $ENV{"REQUEST_METHOD"};
$input = "";
if($requestMethod eq "POST") {
    read(STDIN, $input, $ENV{"CONTENT_LENGTH"});
}
else {
    $input = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'};
}

# Strip off white space and any html tags that come in with the form d
+ata, and
#  create an array of the name/value pairs
%in  = UnencodeFormData();

sendmail(%in);

# Print Return HTML
# Any reference to graphics of other URLs need the path relative to yo
+ur web entry point
#   If your entry point is sys:/novonyx/suitespot/docs and your graphi
+cs are in
#    ~docs/web/graphics
#    the url to use is /web/codebreak/graphics/image.jpg
print "<html><head><title>-----LINKS eMail-----</title></head>\n";
print "<body><center><table><tr><td colspan=2>\n";
print "<center><img src=\"../images/LINKSemail.gif\">\n";
print "<p><hr size=2><br><font face='arial'>Thank you for your email\.
+<br>\n";
print "To continue from where you left off simply click the button bel
+ow.</font></center><br>\n";
print "<hr size=2>\n";
print "</td></tr><tr align=center>\n";
print "<td colspan=2><input type=\"button\" value=\"Continue\" onClick
+=\"history.go(-2)\"></td></tr>\n";
print "<tr align=center><td colspan=2><br><br><font face=arial size=2>
+<a href=$ITEM{link1}>$ITEM{link2}</a></td></tr>\n";
print "</table>\n";
print "</center></body></html>";

sub UnencodeFormData {
    # separate fields
    @fields = split(/&/, $input);

    # separate field names from field values
    foreach $field (@fields) {
        ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $field);

        # Convert + signs to spaces,
         $value =~ tr/+/ /;
   
        # convert %HEX values to ASCII characters
        $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
   
        # remove any embedded comments in case of server-side includes
        $value =~ s/<!--(.|\n)*-->//g;

         # remove any HTML tags
        $value =~ s/<([^>]|\n)*>//g;

        $ITEM{$name} = $value;
    }
    # Replace spaces with underscores in the category name
    # $ITEM{category} = FixCategoryName($UNDERSCORE, $ITEM{category});
    return(%ITEM);
}
<p>
The following code is from the sendmail.pl file
<p>
<code>
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Socket;
use strict;

sub sendmail()
{
  my (%body) = @_; 
  my $line = "";

  # Substitute your mail server here.
  my($mailServer) = 'mailhub.health.nb.ca';
  
  #These next fields come in from the form, your form should have at l
+east the following
  #  fields: To, SendersDepartment, Sender, subject
  my($mailTo)     = "$body{To}\n\n\n\n";
  my($mailFrom)   = "$body{SendersDepartment}";
  my($realName)   = "$body{Sender}";
  my($subject)    = "$body{subject}";


  # These constants shouldn't need changing.
  my($packFormat) = 'S n a4 x8'; #Internet address format (AF_INET:por
+tNumber:serverAddress:eightNulls)
  my($proto)      = getprotobyname("tcp")        || 6;
  my($port)       = getservbyname("SMTP", "tcp") || 25;
  my($name,$aliases,$addrtype,$len,@addrs) = gethostbyname($mailServer
+);
  my($serverAddr) = $addrs[0];

  # If this script dies at this line, it is because you don't have an 
+entry in the SYS:\etc\hosts
  #   file for your mail server. Manually add an entry for the mail se
+rver if not already there.
  if (! defined($len)) {
     die('gethostbyname failed.');
  }

  socket(SMTP, AF_INET(), SOCK_STREAM(), $proto)
     or die("socket: $!");

  connect(SMTP, pack($packFormat, AF_INET(), $port, $serverAddr))
     or die("connect: $!");

  select(SMTP); $| = 1; select(STDOUT);    # use unbuffered i/o.

  {
     my($inpBuf) = '';

     recv(SMTP, $inpBuf, 200, 0);
  }

  sendSMTP(1, "HELO\n");
  sendSMTP(1, "MAIL FROM: <$mailFrom>\n");
  sendSMTP(1, "RCPT TO: <$mailTo>\n");
  sendSMTP(1, "VRFY\n");
  sendSMTP(1, "DATA\n");

  sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "From: $realName <$mailFrom>\n");
  sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "Subject: $subject\n");
  sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "\n");


  # Print each of the name/value pairs coming from the form IF they ha
+ve been filled in
  for $line (keys %body)
 {
     if($line !~ /link/ && $line !~ /subject/) # We don't need to prin
+t out the hidden form fields
       {
         sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "$line = $body{$line}\n") if($body{$lin
+e});
       }     
  }
  
  # Since we have put the name/value pairs into a hash which stores ra
+ndomly, using the above
  #   for loop will print the name/value pairs randomly in your email 
+message.
  #   To print them in a specific sequence, you can explicitly print e
+ach one with the following
  #   format (INSTEAD OF using the for loop).
  #   sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "Sender\'s Name = $body{Sender}\n") if($bo
+dy{Sender});
  #   sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "Sender\'s Department = $body{SendersDepar
+tment}\n") if($body{SendersDelpartment});
  #   sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "Message = $body{Message}\n") if($body{Mes
+sage});

  sendSMTPnoresponse(1, "\n");
  sendSMTP(1, ".\n");
  sendSMTP(1, "QUIT\n");

  close(SMTP);
}

  sub closeSocket {     # close smtp socket on error
     close(SMTP);
     die("SMTP socket closed due to SIGINT\n");
  }

  sub send_to_smtp {
     my($debug)  = shift;
     my($response) = shift;
     my($buffer) = @_;

     # Uncomment the following line for debugging only
     # print STDERR ("> $buffer") if $debug;
     send(SMTP, $buffer, 0);

     if ($response) {
       recv(SMTP, $buffer, 200, 0);
       # Uncomment the following line for debugging only
       # print STDERR ("< $buffer") if $debug;
       return( (split(/ /, $buffer))[0] );
     }
  }

  sub sendSMTP {
    my ($debug) = shift;
    send_to_smtp($debug, 1, @_);
  }

  sub sendSMTPnoresponse {
    my ($debug) = shift;
    send_to_smtp($debug, 0, @_);
  }

1; #return true

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updated by boo_radley : code tags

Edit kudra, 2002-06-06 Added readmore

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl and Email Form problem
by cjf (Parson) on Jun 05, 2002 at 14:50 UTC

    You may want to take a look at the NMS formmail script. Email Modules would probably be of use as well.

[reply]

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