Email Following a Letter Template

A common project activity involves sending email to a group, following a template.

Common Framework

A typical approach has these steps:

1. Prepare a template file, stored in the current directory
   • Regular text will be sent in the format of the file
   • Special "words" may be used to personalize an email:
     For example, to say 'Dear soandso,' the file template would specify'Dear $name,'.
   • For this example, special "words" are:
     • $date = Today's date (This will change to whatever date you send the email; if you want a hard-coded date, you must type it in)
     • $name = person's name from the database
     • $email = person's address from the database
   • For simple scripts, the file template is limited to 8192 characters.
2. Run a script in "testing" mode to check that the email letter looks appropriate (in "testing" mode, the email is sent to the application administrator)
3. Run a script in "real" mode to actually send the email

Common Administrator Interface

NOTES:

• Use of invalid email addresses in testing generates error messages for the Mail Server Administrator
• Please be responsible in testing!!!

The following form provides a typical starting page.