Can I generate email from a URL custom field via PortWeb?

[Thanks to Michael Britt and Victor Velt for this idea]

I describe elsewhere how you can call email from a custom URL field. In PortWeb you could use this method instead:
<a href="mailto:foo@bar.com?Subject=Photo%%20Request&Body=Filename:%%20%Filename%">Request just this photo</A>

Be aware that in this case you are not actually calling the above string from a field in the Catalogue as in the custom field example. Why? Well, you want PortWeb to insert the filename in the %Filename% macro. You also need to use a double %% to stop the escaped characters (e.g. %20) being interpreted as part of a Portfolio macro (e.g. %Filename%).

The URL string passed has a 256 character limit (some references say 458 characters). The above example uses 72 characters so you could add a few questions to your email - though you'll have no control over what the user does in response. If you exceed the character limit, the process fails either giving no warning or spurious error messages such as that "the default email program is not properly installed".

Here's a list of ASCII escaped character codes you may find useful:
%08 = Backspace
%12 = Form Feed
%0A = Line Feed
%0D = Carriage Return
%1B = Escape
%20 = Space
%21 = !
%22 = "
%23 = #
%24 = $
%25 = %
%26 = &
%27 = '
%28 = (
%29 = )
%2A = *
%2B = +
%2C = ,
%2D = -
%2E = .
%2F = /
%30-%39 = 0-9
%3A = :
%3B = ;
%3C = <
%3D = =
%3E = >
%3F = ?
%40 = @
%41-%5A = A-Z
%5B = [
%5C = \
%5D = ]
%5E = ^
%5F = _
%60 = ` (grave accent)
%61-%7A = a-z
%7B = {
%7C = |
%7D = }
%7E = ~
%7F = DEL (Delete)

Question: Can I generate email from a URL custom field via PortWeb? [FAQ00211.htm]
Last Update:- 31 May 2006

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