Simple newsletter system using Coldfusion

If you have a website it can be useful to mantain contacts with your users and send periodically some news from your site. Image you have a database with a table USER and some fileds like name and email. This lesson explains how to implement a simple newsletter system using Coldfusion and <cfmail> tag.

Download Tutorial


Step 1: Add form fields
Create a coldfusion blank page and add the following code to the new page:

<form name="insert" id="insert" method="post" action="newsletter.cfm">
<input name="mailObject" type="text" id="title" size="60">
<textarea name="mailText" cols="60" rows="10" wrap="soft" ></textarea>
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

This code adds a field to insert the object and a textarea to insert the text for your message.

Step 2: Coldfusion code to send the message to all users
Add the following code before the <form> tag seen in the previous step:

<cfif isDefined('FORM.submit')>
<!---Set error = 1 if object field and text field are empty--->
<cfif FORM.mailObject EQ ' ' OR FORM.mailText EQ ' '>
<cfset error = 1>
<cfelse>
<cfquery name="getEmail" datasource="myDatasource">
SELECT *
FROM USER
</cfquery>
<!---If error is not = 1, send the message to all users --->
<cfloop query="getEmail">
<cfmail
to="#getEmail.email#"
from="myemail@mysite.com"
subject="#FORM.mailObject#"
replyto="myemail@mysite.com">

Hello #getEmail.name#,

#FORM.mailText#

*********************

Add other infos here like site address, email to contact you...

</cfmail>
</cfloop>
<!---Set error = 0 if object field and text field are not empty--->
<cfset error = 0>
</cfif>
</cfif>

When you submit the form in the step 1, the code execute a query which gets all email address and names of the users stored in your database and execute a loop to send, to each of them, your message. Remember, you have to change datasource name with your datasource name and <cfmail> parameters from nad replyto with your email address.