How do I send email with JavaScript without opening the mail client

Question

I m writing a HTML page with a registration button that should just silently send an email without opening the local mail client  Here is my HTML    lt form method  post  action    gt       lt input type  text  id  email address  name  name  placeholder  Enter your email address     required gt       lt button onclick  sendMail    return false  gt Send Email lt  button gt   lt  form gt        and here is my JavaScript code    lt script type  text javascript  gt    function sendMail         var link    mailto hello domain com subject Message from                 document getElementById  email address   value                 amp body   document getElementById  email address   value      window location href   link     lt  script gt    The code above works    but it opens the local email client  If I remove the return statement in the onclick attribute like this    lt form method  post  action    gt       lt input type  text  id  email address  name  name  placeholder  Enter your email address     required gt       lt button onclick  sendMail    gt Send Email lt  button gt   lt  form gt        then the email is not sent at all  Am I missing something   Any help would be reeeally appreciated  -

User · Answer

You need to do it directly on a server  But a better way is using PHP  I have heard that PHP has a special code that can send e-mail directly without opening the mail client

User · Answer

Well  PHP can do this easily  It can be done with the PHP mail   function  Here s what a simple function would look like   lt  php       to email    name company com    subject    Testing PHP Mail    message    This mail is sent using the PHP mail function    headers    From  noreply company com   mail  to email  subject  message  headers     gt   This will send a background e-mail to the recipient specified in the  to email  The above example uses hard coded values in the source code for the email address and other details for simplicity  Let   s assume you have to create a contact us form for users fill in the details and then submit   Users can accidently or intentional inject code in the headers which can result in sending spam mail To protect your system from such attacks  you can create a custom function that sanitizes and validates the values before the mail is sent   Let   s create a custom function that validates and sanitizes the email address using the filter var   built in function  Here s an example code   lt  php  function sanitize my email  field         field   filter var  field  FILTER SANITIZE EMAIL       if  filter var  field  FILTER VALIDATE EMAIL             return true        else           return false           to email    name company com    subject    Testing PHP Mail    message    This mail is sent using the PHP mail     headers    From  noreply company com     check if the email address is invalid  secure check  secure check   sanitize my email  to email   if   secure check    false        echo  quot Invalid input quot     else     send email      mail  to email   subject   message   headers       echo  quot This email is sent using PHP Mail quot       gt   We will now let this be a separate PHP file  for example sendmail php  Then  will use this file on form submission  using the action attribute of the form  like   lt form action  quot sendmail php quot  method  quot post quot  gt      lt input type  quot text quot  value  quot Your Name   quot  gt      lt input type  quot password quot  value  quot Set Up A Passworrd quot  gt      lt input type  quot submit quot  value  quot Signup quot  gt      lt input type  quot reset quot  value  quot Reset Form quot  gt   lt  form gt    Hope I could help

User · Answer

You cannot cause the user s browser to send email silently  That would be a horrible security problem as any website could use their system as a spam relay and or harvest their email address   You need to make an HTTP request to a server side process  written in the language of your choice  which sends the mail from your server

User · Answer

Directly From Client    Send an email using only JavaScript  in short   1  register for Mandrill to get an API key 2  load jQuery 3  use   ajax to send an email   Like this -   function sendMail           ajax         type   POST         url   https   mandrillapp com api 1 0 messages send json         data             key    YOUR API KEY HERE            message                from email    YOUR EMAIL HERE              to                                      email    RECIPIENT EMAIL HERE                    name    RECIPIENT NAME  OPTIONAL                     type    to                                            autotext    true              subject    YOUR SUBJECT HERE               html    YOUR EMAIL CONTENT HERE  YOU CAN USE HTML                             done function response           console log response      if you re into that sorta thing              https   medium com design-startups b53319616782  Note  Keep in mind that your API key is visible to anyone  so any malicious user may use your key to send out emails that can eat up your quota     Indirect via Your Server - secure    To overcome the above vulnerability  you can modify your own server to send the email after session based authentication   node js  -  https   www npmjs org package node-mandrill  var mandrill   require  node-mandrill     lt your API Key gt       function sendEmail    name   email   subject   message        mandrill   messages send             message                to    email   email   name   name                from email   noreply yourdomain com               subject   subject              text   message                  function error  response           if  error  console log  error            else console log response                 define your own email api which points to your server   app post    api sendemail    function req  res        var  name   req body name      var  email   req body email      var  subject   req body subject      var  messsage   req body message         implement your spam protection or checks        sendEmail    name   email   subject   message           and then use use   ajax on client to call your email API

User · Answer

I think you can use smtpjs com

User · Answer

You can t do it with client side script only     you could make an AJAX call to some server side code that will send an email

User · Answer

You need a server-side support to achieve this  Basically your form should be posted  AJAX is fine as well  to the server and that server should connect via SMTP to some mail provider and send that e-mail   Even if it was possible to send e-mails directly using JavaScript  that is from users computer   the user would still have to connect to some SMTP server  like gmail com   provide SMTP credentials  etc  This is normally handled on the server-side  in your application   which knows these credentials

User · Answer

There needs to be some type of backend framework to send the email  This can be done via PHP ASP NET  or with the local mail client  If you want the user to see nothing  the best way is to tap into those by an AJAX call to a separate send email file

[javascript] How do I send email with JavaScript without opening the mail client?

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