Server Side JavaScript Mail Sending

Yet another cool feature of server side JavaScript is the ability to send mail via scripted actions. There is a huge amount of possibilities that will enhance your web site when you realize what you can do with script-generated email. Your site can become truly dynamic. Sending a custom email to your users greatly enhances their perception of your site, thus increasing traffic flow and your ever-important online reputation. You would use an instance of the SendMail server side JavaScript object. The use of this object is very simple and straightforward, the common methods and properties of which are listed below. Most are very intuitive if you've ever worked with email before. By now you should be able to spot a method as opposed to a property (yes?).

• Bcc - Blind Carbon Copy. This is the list of users to which you want to send a blind carbon copy of the email.
• Body - This is used to contain the text of the email, the "body" of the document.
• Cc - Carbon Copy. This is the list of users to which you want to send a carbon copy of the email.
• ErrorsTo - This is used to provide an email address which errors will be sent to.
• From - This is used to specify the sender's email address.
• Organization - This is used to provide the company or organization name from which the email was sent.
• ReplyTo - This is used to provide the reply address of the email.
• Smtpserver - This is used to provide the address (IP or HostName) of the mail server which will send the message.
• Subject - This is used to provide the subject of the email.
• To - This is used to provide the email address the email is to be sent to.
• errorCode() - This is used to return a numbered error, if one occurs during the sending of email.
• errorMessage() - This is used to return a verbose error, if one occurs during the sending of email.
• send() - This is used to actually send the email.

From the above list of options, you might realize that you can use a database to send out bulk mail to all of the users of your site, or within your organization. Using the send mail feature inherent to server side JavaScript negates the need for those pesky, slow, and bulky PERL scripts sometimes used to send mail. Also, since the server side script is compiled down to its byte code format, the sending of bulk mail to many users is fairly quick. This is a great advantage of using your script in a lightening quick compiled format.

Using server side mail also reduces the workload for the web master. In using pertinent client side JavaScript, e-mails can be verified and rejected if an e-mail address is not valid. Subject lines may also be verified - there is nothing worse to a web master than having several hundred (or even thousand!!) emails in your inbox with no subjects. Most simply delete them without hesitation (or remorse).

Stop by next week where we'll take a look at the JavaScript File Object and some basic file manipulation.

Database Connectivity via Server Side
The JavaScript Chronicles
Server Side JavaScript and File Manipulation

The JavaScript Chronicles