Using the Form Scraper
What is the form scraper?
The form scraper collects information from a form on your web page, formats the data, and forwards it to your e-mail address. The form scraper is a program which runs on the Bruin OnLine server.
Why do I need to use the form scraper?
If you bypass the form scraper and have the data sent directly to your e-mail address, the information along with a number of encoding characters will be run together in a single line:
sendto=jbruin@ucla.edu&name=Joe&comments=This+is+a+%0D%0Acomment
The form scraper removes the extraneous characters and formats the text so it is easier to read:
sendto = jbruin@ucla.edu
name = Joe
comments = This is a comment
How is the form scraper different from the guestbook?
The guestbook and the form scraper both collect information from a form on your web page. The form scraper sends the form data to your e-mail account, while the guestbook script posts the form data on your web page.
Please Note: Forms are an advanced feature of HTML which can not be handled by Netscape Navigator Gold's web page editor. You will need to use a text editor to create the HTML source pages for the form scraper yourself. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, please consult our HTML reference page before attempting to create your form.
Sending your data to the form scraper
To instruct the reader's web browser to submit the form using the form scraper script, begin your form with the tag:
<form method="post"
action="http://www.bol.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/send-form.cgi">
To tell the form scraper to send the formatted data, add a hidden field to the form:
<input type="hidden" name="sendto"
value="UCLALID@ucla.edu">
where UCLALID@ucla.edu is your own email address.
Create the rest of the form using standard HTML tags.
For example, the form created by this code:
<form method="post"
action="http://www.bol.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/send-form.cgi">
<input name="sendto" value="jbruin@ucla.edu" type="hidden" />
<font size="+2">Please fill this out</font>
name: <input name="name" size="20" />
comments:
<textarea name="comments" cols="15" rows="5"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="send" />
<input type="reset" value="clear" />
</form>
Will appear on your page as:
And produce e-mail in this format:
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 12:28:35 -0700
From: Web Form <nobody@ucla.edu>
To: jbruin@ucla.edu
Subject: Data from web form
----------------------------
sendto = jbruin@ucla.edu
name = Joe
comments = This is a comment