The STACK actions
The SMTP actions
The MAPI actions
The FILE actions
The PRINT actions
Credit Card Validation
The GENERATE Actions
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WebCompiler supports HTML forms mostly as they would work on a normal Web Server. Being
able to process forms could be extremely useful - particularly if you are using
WebCompiler to distribute a Product Catalogue, or maybe a questionnaire or similar.
The main question of course is "how can I access what the user types in to the
forms I create"?
WebCompiler presentations could access a CGI program on a server if you use the http://
protocol identifier on the link to your CGI script, but that's not ideal - the user may
not even have an Internet connection!
To overcome this limitations we have built a range of "actions" in to
WebCompiler to return the data by email, by saving to a File or by combining the users
responses with a "template" to produce a printed form. Click on the appropriate
links for an explanation of how to include these actions in your presentations -
 | STACK will save the responses from the current form
internally, until one of the EMAILC, PRINTC or FILEC actions is executed, after which the
saved responses will be deleted. Multiple STACK actions may be executed to save the
results of multiple forms. |
| SMTP stacks the results of the current form and then sends the
current content of the stack back to an E-Mail address you specify (and the user does not
need any specific E-Mail software, although he does need a currently active TCP/IP
Internet connection). |
| SMTPC performs the same action, but clears the stack after
processing. |
| MAPI stacks the results of the current form and then attaches
the content of the stack to a mail-message and presents it to the user for review. To use
this action the user must have a "simple MAPI client" defined. Most email
clients (and in particular Microsoft's) can work as simple MAPI clients, but there isn't
any way you can tell beforehand if the user has a suitable email client, or if it is
correctly configured. If the attempt to use MAPI fails the user will receive a message
saying so. It may be worth including additional mechanisms as well as MAPI for this
reason. |
| MAPIC performs the same action, but clears the stack after
processing. |
| SMAPI performs the same action as MAPI, but does it silently,
the message with the data attached will simply appear in the user's outbox. Again, a
simple MAPI client is required on the user's system. |
| SMAPIC performs the same action, but clears the stack after
processing. |
| PRINT stacks the results of the current form and then uses
the current content of the stack as items to replace variables in another HTML form (which
will probably be otherwise inaccessible to the user because there is no link to it), which
it will then print. |
| PRINTC performs the same action, but clears the stack after
processing. |
| GENERATE stacks the results of the current form and then uses
the current content of the stack as items to replace variables in another HTML form (which
will probably be otherwise inaccessible to the user because there is no link to it), which
it will then display. |
| GENERATEC performs the same action, but clears the stack
after processing. |
| FILE stacks the results of the current form and then saves the
current content of the stack to a file that the user selects by use of a standard
File/Save As dialog. This may be useful to retrieve data either on disk or when the user
has an E-mail capability but not using TCP/IP (CompuServe for example). |
| FILEC performs the same action, but clears the stack after
processing.
Note that all these actions must use the POST method, or they won't work. |
For a demonstration of how actions work in WebCompiler, fill in the following simple
form and press the Submit button. It will cause a standard Windows File Save dialog to
appear. Specify a file and click OK and look in the file to see the result. The WebCompiler Order Forms provide another example you can review to
see how things have been done.
You should also review the Compiler Options dialog
where details of how you can encrypt the data resulting from Form Processing is discussed.
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