eric e. dolecki

Interactive Technologist and Designer

This certainly is not the most secure way of sending an email by any means, but it does work. So you would like your iPhone application to be able to send an email - perhaps a feedback form of some kind, etc. The example supplied here contains a UITextField and a UIButton. A UIAlertView and a UIActionSheet are also used. Oh, and there is a little snippet of PHP to put on your server someplace (that's the unsecure part here).

Your .h file:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface SendEmailViewController : UIViewController  {
 IBOutlet UIButton *button;
 IBOutlet UITextField *messageText;
 IBOutlet UIButton *backgroundButton;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) UIButton *button;
@property (nonatomic, retain) UITextField *messageText;
@property (nonatomic, retain) UIButton *backgroundButton;

-(IBAction)sendMail:(id)sender;
-(IBAction)textFieldDoneEditing:(id)sender;
-(IBAction)backgroundClick:(id)sender;

@end

And now your .m file:

#import "SendEmailViewController.h"

@implementation SendEmailViewController

@synthesize button, messageText, backgroundButton;

-(IBAction)textFieldDoneEditing:(id)sender {
 [sender resignFirstResponder];
}

-(IBAction)backgroundClick:(id)sender {
 [messageText resignFirstResponder]; 
}

-(void)displayAlert {
 UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Email Sent" message:@"Thank you for contacting me" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
 [messageText setText:@""];
 [alert show];
 [alert release];
}

-(void)displaySheet {
 NSString *msg = nil;
 msg = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"Send Email? Your message:\"%@\"", messageText.text];
 UIActionSheet *actionSheet = [[UIActionSheet alloc] initWithTitle:msg delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"Not yet" destructiveButtonTitle:@"Yes" otherButtonTitles:nil];
 [actionSheet showInView:self.view];
 [actionSheet release];
 [msg release];
}

-(void)actionSheet:(UIActionSheet *)actionSheet didDismissWithButtonIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex {
 if( !(buttonIndex == [actionSheet cancelButtonIndex]) ){
  NSString *post = nil;
  post = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"message=%@",messageText.text];
  NSData *postData = [post dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES];
  NSString *postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [postData length]];
  NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init] autorelease];
  [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.yourserveraddy/yourScript.php"]];
  [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
  [request setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];
  [request setValue:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
  [request setHTTPBody:postData];
  [ NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:request delegate:self ];
  
  [post release];
  [self displayAlert];
 }
}

-(IBAction)sendMail:(id)sender { 
 [self displaySheet];
}

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning {
 // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview.
    [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
 
 // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use.
}

- (void)viewDidUnload {
 // Release any retained subviews of the main view.
 // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil;
}
- (void)dealloc {
    [super dealloc];
 [button release];
 [messageText release];
 [backgroundButton release];
}

And lastly your PHP file:

<?php
 $message = $_REQUEST['message'] ;
 mail( "recipient@server.com", "Test Message", $message );
?>

You just need to set your outlets and set you should be all set.

Labels: email, Objective-C, Xcode