Article:		Working with Sheets in Cocoa
Subject:		Extension: Sending email from Address Book
Date:		2001-10-17 15:34:16
From:		mikenidel
I've been sticking pretty closely to this tutorial so far, but I finally decided I felt intrepid enough to try extending the application a bit. Specifically, I wanted to be able to select a row or rows from the address book, click a button, and open an email with the right recipient(s) in the To: field. Turns out it isn't too hard, once I found out how to open a URL. Here's how I did it, feel free to add to or comment on this approach. In Interface Builder: Create an action in the Controller class called sendMail. Then add a button wherever you like and connect it to the controller, using the sendMail message as the target for the button. I added a "Send Email" button to the right of the "Delete" button in the main application window. Once you have that connected up, add the line - (IBAction)sendMail:(id)sender; to your Controller.h file, and add the following code to the implementation in Controller.m: - (IBAction)sendEmail:(id)sender { NSMutableString *url = [NSMutableString stringWithString:@"mailto:"]; NSString *str; NSEnumerator *enumerator; NSNumber *index; enumerator = [tableView selectedRowEnumerator]; if((index = [enumerator nextObject])) { str = [[records objectAtIndex:[index intValue]] objectForKey:@"Email"]; [url appendString:str]; while ( (index = [enumerator nextObject]) ) { str = [[records objectAtIndex:[index intValue]] objectForKey:@"Email"]; [url appendString:@","]; [url appendString:str]; } } [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL: [NSURL URLWithString:url]]; } Note that if you're familiar with the mailto: URL format standard, you can make the new message open with a starting subject, body, and various other headers, using the query syntax. Try out "mailto:somebody@company.com?subject=MyApp&body=Hello" and find out more info about the mailto: URL options at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2368.html Note that you have to encode any characters that aren't allowed in URLs - particularly blank spaces (%20) and such. I'm sure there are Cocoa methods to encode and decode URL strings, I just haven't found them yet. Good Luck! -schmeldog

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Extension: Sending email from Address Book
  2002-01-02 21:28:53  michele [View]
  
  
  Changed the code as follows :
  
  // For sending mail
  - (IBAction) sendMail: (id) sender
  {
  NSMutableString *url = [NSMutableString stringWithString: @"mailto:"];
  NSString *str;
  NSEnumerator *enumerator;
  NSNumber *index;
  
  // Check if there is a selected row
  if ([tableView numberOfSelectedRows] == 0)
  {
  return;
  }
  
  // Enumerate all selected rows
  enumerator = [tableView selectedRowEnumerator];
  
  // Traverse the selected rows with enumerator
  while ( ( index = [enumerator nextObject] ) )
  {
  // Retrieve the email field
  str = [[records objectAtIndex: [index intValue]]
  objectForKey: @"Email"];
  // Add a comma to separate email addresses if this is not the first one
  if (![url isEqualToString: @"mailto:"])
  {
  [url appendString: @","];
  }
  // Add the email address to the previously built string
  [url appendString: str];
  }
  

• Extension: Sending email from Address Book
  2001-10-26 12:07:56  rainwadj [View]
  
  
  This is a great addition. I figured out how to clean up the string. When the Send Mail button is clicked, I have another sheet open with fields for To: (which is filled in with the email addresses from the selected records), Cc:, Bcc: and Subject:, and buttons for Send and Cancel. The action for the Send button on the sheet invokes this method:
  
  - (IBAction)sendEmailMessage:(id)sender
  {
  NSMutableString *temp = [NSMutableString
  stringWithString:@"mailto:"];
  NSString *url;
  
  [temp appendString:[emailToField stringValue]];
  [temp appendString:@"?cc="];
  [temp appendString:[emailCcField stringValue]];
  [temp appendString:@"&bcc="];
  [temp appendString:[emailBccField stringValue]];
  [temp appendString:@"&subject="];
  [temp appendString:[emailSubjField stringValue]];
  
  url = (NSString *)
  CFURLCreateStringByAddingPercentEscapes
  (NULL, (CFStringRef)temp, NULL, NULL,
  kCFStringEncodingISOLatin1);
  
  [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:
  [NSURL URLWithString:url]];
  
  [NSApp stopModal];
  }
  
  
  Everything gets put in the proper places in a new message window in Mail.app. Cool stuff.