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

Hi Guys, can some advise me on how to format HTML within a posted email using MIME lite?

Essentially I am passing form details from one page to a verify email. On this email I want to format some basic HTML. I want to pass form variables from the email and submit them back onto my site. A basic verification without a date base.

The P1 tags are set up in my css

here is my code

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
use CGI qw(:standard);
use MIME::Lite;
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
    $CGI::POST_MAX=1024 * 100;  # max 100K posts
    
    
my $organisers_name= param('organisers_name');
my $organisers_address= param('organisers_address');
my $organisers_homeN= param('organisers_homeN');
my $organisers_mobile= param('organisers_mobile');
my $organisers_email= param('organisers_email');
my $prefered_contact= param('prefered_contact');
my $brides_name= param('brides_name');
my $brides_number= param('brides_number');
my $wedding_date= param('wedding_date');
my $bride_organiser= param('bride_organiser');
my $suprise= param('suprise');

my $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
         To      =>$organisers_email,
         Subject =>'Verify3',
         Type    =>'multipart/related'
    );
   $msg->attach(
        Type => 'text/html',
        Data => '<BODY>
                        <FORM METHOD="post" ACTION="bookings3.cgi" enc
+type="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="organisers_name" VA
+LUE="$organisers_name">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="organisers_address"
+ VALUE="$organisers_address">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="organisers_homeN" V
+ALUE="$organisers_homeN">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="organisers_mobile" 
+VALUE="$organisers_mobile">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="organisers_email" V
+ALUE="$organisers_email">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="prefered_contact" V
+ALUE="$prefered_contact">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="brides_name" VALUE=
+"$brides_name">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="brides_number" VALU
+E="$brides_number">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="wedding_date" VALUE
+="$wedding_date">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="bride_organiser" VA
+LUE="$bride_organiser">
                        <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="suprise" VALUE="$su
+prise">
                        <INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Proceed to Step 3"
+>
                        </FORM>
                        <hr>
    <h1>O Name</h1>
    <p>$organisers_name<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>O Address</h1>
    <p>$organisers_address<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>O HomePh</h1>
    <p>$organisers_homeN<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>O Mobile</h1>
    <p>$organisers_mobile<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>O email</h1>
    <p>$organisers_email<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>O contact</h1>
    <p>$prefered_contact<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>B Name</h1>
    <p>$brides_name<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>B Number</h1>
    <p>$brides_number<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>B date</h1>
    <p1>$wedding_date<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>B Organiser Check</h1>
    <p1>$bride_organiser<br>
    <hr>
    <h1>B Suprise</h1>
    <p>$suprise<br>
    <hr>
                    </BODY>',
            
    );
$msg->send;
    
    
print header(-type=>'text/html');    
print <<EOF ;
<html>
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http:/
+/www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" >
<title>$organisers_name Hens party with The Man in the Charcoal Suit b
+ooking page</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../web_layout.css" >
</head>
<body>
<div id="everything1">
    <div id="top_text">
    </div>
    <div id="left">    
        <div id="navcontainer">
            <ul id="navlist">
                <li><a href="../index.html"><img src="../images/Logo_p
+ic.jpg" width="70" height="176" border="0"></a></li>
                <br>
                <li><a><img src="../images/icons/bookings.jpg" width="
+70" height="70" border="0" hspace="0"></a></li>
                <li><a href="../bookings.html">Booking office</a></li>
                <br>
                <li><a href="../comments.html"><img src="../images/ico
+ns/comments.jpg" width="70" height="70" border="0" hspace="0"></a></l
+i>
                <li><a href="../comments.html">Testimonials</a></li>
                <br>
                <li><a href="../contact.html"><img src="../images/icon
+s/contact.jpg" width="70" height="70" border="0" hspace="0"></a></li>
                <li><a href="../contact.html">Contact Us</a></li>
            </ul>
        </div>
    </div>    
<div id="side_pic"></div>

    <div id="main1">
    <img src="../images/booking_steps/step2.jpg" align="right">
    <br>
    <p1><b1>So far so good $organisers_name.</b1><br><br>
    <p1>Now while leaving this window, open a new window and check you
+r email.
    <br><br>
    <b1>Find the CLICK HERE LINK</b1>
    <br>
    <p1>And click it to proceed to the next step.<p1>
    <br><br>
    <p1>If you do not receive the email:<br><br>
    <p1>1. Click the back button and verify your email address then pr
+oceed as last time.<br><br>
    <p1>2. If you do not receive the email again verify your email's j
+unk setting or junk folder.<br>
    <FORM>
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="Back" onClick="history.go(-1);return true;
+">
    </FORM>
    </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
EOF


exit ;

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: MIME lite
by marto (Cardinal) on May 14, 2010 at 13:22 UTC

    You already have an existing thread with this same question. Why are you reposting? What doesn't work? You need to put some effort into your posts. See How do I post a question effectively?.

    Having a form in an HTML email is perhaps not wise. Look at your form action? bookings3.cgi isn't going to be resolvable by the email client. Why not just email them a link (perhaps with some unique identifier) so they can either click it or if they don't accept HTML email, copy and paste it into the browser address bar.

[reply]
[d/l]

      Thanks for your reply.

      Your right in one respect that I have post questions on MIME while I was learning how to construct it.

      Corion also point out the MIME page, which is what I used to construct what I have learnt so far.

      As limited as I am, learning is slow and I do try to only resort to asking questions on SoPW as a last resort.

      The MIME Lite resource page leaves out some cruical explaination on some stuff. It is all there but I guess it is written for users that have intermediate knowledge.

      The missing part in my sricpt was the Data => qq{ which I had originally used but some reason change to Data => ' which changes the HTML tags to string only.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        Don't get me wrong, I want you to post, however since you already have a thread on this topic you could have posted there rather than start a new one. Please take onboard the other issues raised with your code.

        Note that the MIME::Lite documentation is specific to the module, it doesn't cover basic perl. For that you should check out:

        Thanks

[reply]
Re: MIME lite
by fullermd (Vicar) on May 14, 2010 at 13:25 UTC

    Well, there are two obvious problems with what you have there.

    The first is that the form action isn't going to mean anything as a relative URL in an email. You'll have to have a full URL there for it to have a chance of getting to your site (how can it know where your site is?)

    The second is that you're passing the email body as a single-quoted string, so none of those variables are going to be interpolated. Maybe you should use a heredoc instead.

    There are other weirdnesses (like what is that javascript 'back' function supposed to do in a mail client?), but those two are the obvious "this can't work" bits.

[reply]
Re: MIME lite
by Corion (Patriarch) on May 14, 2010 at 13:18 UTC

    Where exactly is your problem? MIME::Lite also shows how to send HTML and how to include the necessary prerequisites like images as well.

[reply]

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