How would I do data entry by email?

Question

Anyone know of a good way to do this?

My intent is to send out an email with a set of data. The recipient can then change some of the data, delete entries, or add to the data.  Then they reply to the email, and I take the result and feed it into a program which will populate my database.

I do NOT want to expose any part of my database online. The only data to come and go will be unique to the person receiving the email.

I do NOT want to give end-users an executable program to produce properly-formatted output. Javascript would be acceptable, as would anything else runnable in a browser, so long as its source can come in an email and not be blocked by anti-virus measures.

PDF forms might be a possibility, though I'd like to hear from someone who's had experience pulling data from a PDF form to see if my plans can be managed.

Anyone ever tried doing this sort of thing, and can give me advice and/or options here?

youngboy1606 · Accepted Answer

A PDF won't work. JavaScript is client side code and won't work. You could strip the email but what a giant waste of time.

Why would you not create a server side page that would create a temp file with the information they enter? It could be a text file or XML or whatever you want to use. Name it with their GUID. Since you don't indicate if you'll manipulate the data after they enter it then just create a routine to grab each file and input it in and delete the file. When they hit the submit button on your form have it email someone they need to suck the info in.

If your trying to clean your data then this is what I did to update our subscriptions.

I create a dynamic form that shows them all their unique data that needs updating. I wrote a email program that sends them out a link with a unique ID in the query string that when they click on the link takes them to that page that displays their information. I have them make the corrections and when they submit it it emails me the info. I could store their info into a file that gets sent just as easy but in my case the emailed info works fine.

wetzel · Answer

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How would I do data entry by email?

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