E Mail

I've long wanted for e-mail to be easier. If I want to say

"Davin, your code works except on line 37",

why do I have to go to a clumsy e-mail client. Why can't I type in an apl session

"your code works except on line 37" qkEmail "Davin".

Now I can. Of course, I can also give it a list of 400 e-mail addresses as the right argument and it will send the message to all asynchronously (faster because the next starts before the prior one is sent). qkEmail does this with a utility built by Eric Lescasse and it is part of "Net Access Objects". The best commercial product I've found is ConstantContact.com, but it is awkward for routine use according to one user who said it is wonderful for bulk mail. Eric's Net Access Object is easy for an apl programmer to adapt for one's own way of working. One very tough issue is that many ISP's won't let e-mail sent by Eric's facility to go thru. Spam control at att.net and gmail.com don't let these e-mails go thru, comcast.com only lets a few thru, but earthlink.net does let a bulk e-mailing go thru. Eric's facility is called NetAccess 2.0, or the OBJECTS.DLL C# 2.0 Assembly. It requires Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 Net Access has other objects as well.

'#' •wi 'XInfo' 'Objects'
Objects.ADO ActiveObject Objects.ADO
Objects.FTP ActiveObject Objects.FTP
Objects.Mail ActiveObject Objects.Mail
Objects.TExcel ActiveObject Objects.TExcel
Objects.Web ActiveObject Objects.Web

Here are the properties of "Objects.MAIL". The first 5 properties are constant for the user. There are 3 properties you must create for each message: xTo, xSubject and xBodyHTML (or xBody). I can see occasional need for the next 9 properties. The rest I haven't had to deal with; some are probably used in Eric's demo code which I adapted.

1. xServer - server thru which the message will be sent
2. xFrom - sender's e-mail address
3. xPort - the port # thru which e-mail can be sent on your computer
4. xUser - user name by which you are identified by your server
5. xPassword - password for use of your server
6. xTo - vector of e-mail addresses to which the message is to be sent
7. xSubject - subject
8. xBodyHTML - the message composed as HTML (use xBody for plain text)
9. xCC
10. xBCC
11. xAttachments
12. xBody
13. xError
14. xHeaders
15. xPriority
16. xReadReceipt
17. xReplyTo
18. children
19. class
20. clsid
21. data
22. def
23. description
24. errorcode
25. errormessage
26. events
27. instance
28. interface
29. links
30. methods
31. modified
32. modifystop
33. name
34. obj
35. opened
36. pending
37. progid
38. properties
39. self
40. state
41. suppress
42. unicodebstr
43. version

Eric adds this comment. One can send Emails from APL using CDO or a number of other techniques. I personally have 4 or 5 APL functions which can send Emails and use different techniques.

One uses CDO, uses the BLAT utility, another one uses low level sockets only, one uses the Outlook.Application object, one uses ShellExecute, etc.

However none of these APL functions is able to send Emails asynchronously and that makes a "huge" difference.

For example, I used to be sending E-mailings every 2 months to about 1000 recipients for a customer of mine with my APL functions: this used to take more than one hour. Moreover it rarely went to completion without bumping for a reason or another (not due to my programming).

Now, with my C# DLL, sending the same E-mailing to 1000 persons takes about one minute and never fails.