Send contents of a dynamically-generated survey page over email

Question

I have an installation of survey web app LimeSurvey set up for a coworker's project. It works great. I've customized the HTML, CSS (with a separate print stylesheet), and JavaScript to our liking.

I need the user to able to send the contents of a dynamically-generated page of questions (in our case actually "recommendations", but still "questions" to the system) either in the body of an email, or as an attachment. This content contains a number of divs with simple formatted (some bolding) text content. Preferably this email would use the print stylesheet I've defined, but really anything readable would do.

I would use an existing service like EcoSafe, but that service visits the given URL itself and converts it to a PDF. This means they get the front page of the survey rather than the dynamically-generated page content the user sees.

I've searched and found some talk of PHP libraries that can send formatted emails, but I have little-to-no PHP experience. I'm thinking maybe I can use JavaScript or JQuery to grab the contents of the page and then a server-side tool to send that content in an email...but I don't quite know where to start. I have full access to our web server and so can install any libraries or scripts necessary.

Or if there's even a way to do this with mailto: links, that could be sufficient.

Anybody have ideas on how to send the contents of a dynamically-generated page in an email?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use included system from LimeSurvey.

1. Construct some part of your body with Expression Manager: example :"Your answer to {QuestionCode.question} was {QuestionCode.NAOK}" in some equation question type (more easy to use it after)
2. Use 'Send basic admin notification email to:' par to put the email adress : you can use EM too : for example {if(Q1.NAOK=='Y','yesadress@example.org','adress@example.org')} ...
3. Use Email template/Basic admin notification to put all your needed content.

Denis

Answer 2

EDIT: As Cheekysoft points out in the comments, this code as written is not secure and would allow a malicious user to send any arbitrary email content through your app.

In other words, do not use the code below as-is.

---

I ended up using a combination of jQuery and PHP to get the job done.

1. On my survey page I added a small form to collect the user's email address.
2. I used jQuery to POST this form and the contents of the page's wrapper tag to a PHP script.
3. In that PHP script, I used Emogrifier to add in-line tags to the HTML passed in by jQuery using a stylesheet as reference (because most email clients, including Gmail, don't allow using linked styleheets).
4. Then (still in the PHP script) I sent the actual email using SwiftMailer (thanks for pointing me towards it, Marc B) and a Google Apps account's SMTP functionality.

Works great!

In case it will help anyone in the future, here's the PHP script (sanitized):

<?php

/***** INITIALIZE *****/

/* Import libraries */
require_once 'swiftmailer/swift_required.php';
require_once 'emogrifier/emogrifier.php';

/* Email stylesheet location */
$stylesheet = 'http://example.com/email.css';

/* SMTP Account Info */
$smtpusername = "sender@gmail.com";
$smtppassword = "senderpassword";
$smtpserver = "smtp.gmail.com";
$smtpport = 465;
$smtpsecurity = "ssl";


/***** RETRIEVE THE DATA *****/

/* Retrieve the passed-in variables */
/* HTML for the email body */
$html = $_POST['content'];
/* Recipient mail address */
$address = $_POST['address'];
/* Recipient name */
$name = $_POST['name'];
if ($name==NULL || $name=="") {
    $name = "You";
}

/***** MODIFY THE HTML *****/
// Get stylesheet contents as a string
$css = file_get_contents($stylesheet);

// Convert stylesheet into in-line styles using Emogrifier - http://www.pelagodesign.com/sidecar/emogrifier/
$converter = new Emogrifier($html, $css);
$content = $converter->emogrify();


/***** CREATE THE MESSAGE *****/

/* Create the message */
$message = Swift_Message::newInstance()

  //Give the message a subject
  ->setSubject("Results for $name")

  //Set the From address with an associative array
  ->setFrom(array('sender@gmail.com' => 'Sender Name'))

  //Set the To addresses with an associative array
  ->setTo(array($address => $name))

  //Give it a body
  ->setBody($content, 'text/html')
  ;

/***** SEND THE EMAIL *****/

//Create the Transport
$transport = Swift_SmtpTransport::newInstance($smtpserver, $smtpport, $smtpsecurity)
  ->setUsername($smtpusername)
  ->setPassword($smtppassword)
  ;

//Create the Mailer using your created Transport
$mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport);

//Send the message
$result = $mailer->send($message);

if ($result == "1") {
    echo "<span class='sendstatus success'>Email sent successfully. </span>";
} else {
    echo "<span class='sendstatus failure'>An error occurred. Result code: $result </span>";
}

?>

And here's the jQuery form (simplified a bit):

<div id="emailresults">
    <form id="emailRecsForm" action="http://example.com/emailresults/emailrecs.php"> <!-- THIS PAGE WHERE THE PHP ABOVE IS LOCATED -->
        <h3><img src="email-icon.png" /> Email Your Results</h3>
        <label for="name">Name</label><input type="text" id="name" name="name" placeholder="Recipient's name (optional)" />
        <label for="address">Email address</label><input type="text" id="address" name="address" class="required email" placeholder="recipient@address.org" />
        <div id="submitdiv"><input type="submit" class="submit" value="Send Results" /></div>
    </form>
    <!-- the result of the send will be rendered inside this div -->
    <div id="result"></div>
</div>

<script>
/* attach a submit handler to the form */
$("#emailRecsForm").submit(function(event) {
    /* stop form from submitting normally */
    event.preventDefault();

    $( "#submitdiv" ).empty().append('<span class="sendstatus working"><img src="/images/loadwheel.gif" alt="Sending..."></img></span>');

    /* get some values from elements on the page: */
    var $form = $( this ),
        name = $form.find( 'input[name="name"]' ).val(),
        address = $form.find( 'input[name="address"]' ).val(),
        html = $('.container').html(),
        url = "http://example.com/emailrecs.php";

    /* Send the data using post and put the results in a div */
    $.post( url, { name: name, address: address, content: html },
      function( data ) {
          $( "#submitdiv" ).empty().append('<br />').append( data ).append('<input type="submit" class="submit" value="Send Results" />');
          $form.find( 'input[name="name"]' ).val("");
          $form.find( 'input[name="address"]' ).val("");
      }
    );
});
</script>