Re: [Chicken-users] Sending mail from a web site

[Thomas Hintz]

Hi Matt,

On Nov 1, 2013 7:01 AM, "Matt Gushee" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hello, chicken peeps--
>
> I am trying to figure out the best way to send e-mail messages from a
> Chicken-based web site. Actually, there are two distinct use cases.
> First, I have a business web site that is implemented as an ad hoc
> Chicken program; it's been running nicely for about a year, but it
> does not have a contact form, and I need that. So in this case, the
> email all goes to one place (my account) but will contain arbitrary
> messages input by visitors (uh-oh!). I also have a potential client
> who wants a contact form, though whether she will let me use this
> weird Scheme language is undecided--I might be stuck with Python or
> [shudder] PHP. Note that in these cases, since they are for specific
> sites, I have substantial control (in the case of my site) or at least
> knowledge (in the case of the client's site) of the environment and of
> any external programs that may be used.
>
> The second scenario is for my Coq au Vin blogware. Here I want to
> develop an email notification system to support user registration and
> possibly to notify admins of error conditions. In this case, my code
> will be operating in unknown environments, but the content of the
> messages will be controlled by the site administrator.
>
> Anyway, I can see two obvious approaches, neither of which seems very
> satisfactory. There is the smtp egg, but that seems intended for
> complex mail-handling tasks done by people with detailed knowledge of
> the SMTP protocol, which I don't have. Mind you, I'm not unwilling to
> learn; it's just that in my superficial view, this egg seems much too
> complex for the (conceptually) simple task of sending messages. The
> other method would be to call out to the command line via
> 'process-run' or 'with-output-to-pipe' or some such thing. Although I
> don't know of any specific problems with the latter method, it seems
> like a potential source of errors and security holes.

Another option is to use SendGrid and the send-grid egg: http://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/4/send-grid SendGrid handles all of the gnarly deliverability issues for you. It is free at low volumes. The egg has a very simple API.

All the best,
Thomas Hintz