7.8. Putting Additional Information in mailto Links
Problem
You need to pre-format an email message generated from a link on your web site.
Solution
Extend the mailto
link to include values for the message
subject, body, and additional recipients.
A basic mailto
link on a web
page creates a new email message in the user's default email
application. It's a good idea to make the actual address the link,
because that helps reinforce for the user what happens when she
selects the link:
<a href="mailto:address@domain.com">address@domain.com</a>
You can create more complex links that fill in parts of the
message. With Subject
and Body
, you can ensure at least some
meaningful content in the email messages you receive from your
site:
<a href="mailto:address@domain.com?Subject= web site%20comment&Body=Type%20your%20message%20here:"> address@domain.com</a>
Tip
The characters %20
indicate
a space in the encoded URL, though most browsers can handle an
unencoded space.
You also can add additional recipients in the To:, Cc:
, and Bcc:
headers of the message by separating
their addresses with commas:
<a href="mailto:address@domain.com,another@domain.com& Cc:afriend@domain.com&Bcc:someone@domain.com">address@domain.com</a>
Discussion
Unprotected email addresses in web page code are like blood in the water for spam sharks. If you must use linked email addresses on your site (rather than an email form that hides actual addresses), be sure to read Recipe 9.11 for more information. Most of the protection techniques ...
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