Mandrill changing

[DaveM]

Re: Mandrill changing

This holds a list of many other possible gateways for sending email. I have not researched them. This is embedded in a tool that I use and I just ran across it.
http://www.acyba.com/acysms/gateways.html

Hope it helps somebody.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Mandrill changing

Get this, one of my very first Alpha-related blog posts was on "tracking your email campaign". This was when we were just starting to see not-so-hidden redirect links in emails that were spying on us.

http://alphatogo.blogspot.com/2006/0...our-email.html

[Lance Gurd]

Re: Mandrill changing

Hi all would like to report on my first day of using Steve's function and Sparkpost.

Steve's function is very easy to implement publish the AEX and then it is just a case of swapping email_send_mandrill with wt_email_send_sparkpost, entering your API in the right place and away you go.

As far as Sparkpost goes, in the last four hours I have sent out 5 purchase orders in emails as attachments (PDF), sometimes to multiple recipients, and always copied to my own email address. Out of the emails sent I have had recipient who could not read the attachment although when I got him to send it back to me all was fine at my end! and I have only received my copy once, so there are 4 of my copy purchase orders floating about somewhere.

It would be good to hear other peoples findings

[Steve Wood]

Re: Mandrill changing

Lance, to help understand what is being sent to SparkPost, generate a log of your function calls to wt_send_email_sparkpost(), something like this:

....
dim pResult as p = wt_email_send_sparkpost("",ms)

vout = now() + crlf()
vout = vout + "RETURNED: " + pResult.body + crlf() + "------" + crlf() '==RETURNED FROM SPARKPOST IN JSON
vout = vout + "POSTED : " + pResult.json + crlf() + "------" + crlf() '==WHAT WE POSTED TO SPARKPOST
save_to_file(vout,"c:\a5\mylog.txt",.t.)

If you have a hard time reading the json, send it to me. Don't keep the log on forever because it will get big quick if you are attaching files.

I will be using this in my own applications and will expand the function to include email campaign, etc.

[martinwcole]

Re: Mandrill changing

For big campaigns I can see using a 3rd party. However for sending regular emails there is a great risk that the same thing that happened with Mandrill will happen with any 3rd party - especially when the first n thousand are free.

I have reverted to a pointer dot variable for sending emails, copying to me and to the client's special address for storing them.

[Lance Gurd]

Re: Mandrill changing

Will try that Steve next time I need to send a purchase order.

I have since sent a work order to a fixer, who reported he could see the attached report but none of the data in it on his iphone, he read the same email on his laptop and the attachment rendered correctly!

[CharlesParker]

Re: Mandrill changing

Well, I am pleased to say I FINALLY got steve's sparkpost function working for me. I have a few pointers for folks, and I am telling on myself as to how dumb I am sometimes but I do not mind as I hope to help others in the process.
First of all, there seems to be a crippling difference between

dim pResult as p = wt_email_send_sparkpost("",ms)

<---WORKS...
AND

dim pResult as p = wt_email_send_sparkpost("<SPARKPOST API KEY>",ms)

<--- DOESN'T WORK...

Also, when you create your api key, don't simply select "Send smtp" select ALL
Lastly, the only drawback I can see over mandrills service was I could name any "Sent from email address" as opposed to now it can ONLY come from my sending domain.
Also when setting up your sending domain do NOT use the www in your sending domain, just put "yourdomain.com"
for me this stopped me from being able to verify by email my domains.

A lot of mistakes I made, but tonight I swore I wouldn't drink another beer until I figured it out - and of course I figured it out tonight...

CHEERS ~

[calyxte]

Re: Mandrill changing

Hello Charles,
I was able to get the dim pResult as p = wt_email_send_sparkpost("<SPARKPOST API KEY>",ms) to work for me with no problems.

What I can't do:
I have tried wt_email_send_sparkpost using the datasource method and I am unable to get it to work at all.
I am using all of Steve's data method info from his documentation and I get back this error which is:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ "errors": [ { "message": "At least one valid recipient is required", "code": 5002 } ] }

{
"recipients":[
{
"address" : {"email" : "none"},

}
],
"content":{
"from":{
"name":"Larry",
"email":"[email protected]"
},
"subject":"SparkPost Test for {{ Fname }}",
"text":"",
"html":"<b>Test HTML Message</b> for {{ Fname }} {{ Lname }}",
"attachments":[

]
}
}
-------------------------------------------------

Has anyone been able to get this sparkpost function to work using the datasource method as Steve describes.
I sure can't get it to work, if you can will you please post the code you are using to get it to work?
Here is my simple code, can anyone see what I may be doing wrong or what may be missing?
Thank you
Calyxe

dim ms as p

ms.send_to = "none" '==SET TO ANY NON-NULL VALUE
ms.from_email = "[email protected]"
ms.from_name = "Calyxte"
ms.subject = "SparkPost Test for {{ Fname }}"
ms.message_html = "<b>Test HTML Message</b> for {{ Fname }} {{ Lname }}"


'==DATASOURCE. EXAMPLE
dim ms.dataSource as c = <<%txt%
[
email:"[email protected]", Fname: "Larry", Lname: "Bee" },
email:"[email protected]", Fname: "Larry2", Lname: "Bee2" },
]
%txt%


dim pResult as p = wt_email_send_sparkpost("xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",ms)
if pResult.error = .t. then
save_to_file(pResult.body + crlf(2) + pResult.json,"c:\sparkpost_error.txt")
end if

[Steve Wood]

Re: Mandrill changing

Elbee, this is fixed, see update PM.

Also, the syntax for the dataSource input is in correct in my documentation (although it does not matter in this case). See the notes in red below.

dim ms.dataSource as c = <<%txt%
[
{ email:"[email protected]", Fname: "Larry", Lname: "Bee" },
{ email:"[email protected]", Fname: "Larry2", Lname: "Bee2" } [omit the comma]
]
%txt%

[rderksen]

Re: Mandrill changing

Steve, followed your excellent instructions and got it uploaded to the server and tried it this morning.

Worked perfectly as a drop in replacement for Mandrill.


Thanks a million!

Richard

[calyxte]

Re: Mandrill changing

Hello Steve,
Steve,
Thank you for correcting the function.
I have run the test data and it is fine.

Will you be implementing the ms.send_to_cc and the ms.send_to_bcc into the function.

Right now the function wont send to those. Or at least I am not seeing the emails arrive.
I do know that sparkpost would just add those email addresses to the ms.send_to automatically and send out a new email specifically for those and that is actually what is needed so additional code does not need to be written to send out duplicate emails to the json datasource.

We need this so we we can actually receive a duplicate of the emails that went out and know they went out.
Again thanks for updating your function last night, I will be programming with it today. I will keep you advised on how it goes.
Calyxte

[Steve Wood]

Re: Mandrill changing

SparkPost totally ignores BCC and just make it look like a TO. It does process CC's properly and I will implement that later today. It was hard enough ("great fun") to recreate all of the features of Alpha's Mandrill function AND keep all of the same input parameters, and their various formats.

As it is, this is really a simple function at its heart, it just formats and sends json off to their server for processing, plus error checking. I took the time to write it mainly because later on I need to implement the more complex functionality like email campaign and integrate web hooks. Web Hooks (telling your application about bounces, opens, etc) provide valuable information to your app.

[Lance Gurd]

Re: Mandrill changing

Hi Steve,

Attached are a couple of logfiles of me sending my purchase orders. The JSON all looks fine to me, I am the last entry on the recipient list and out of 12 purchase orders sent where I am copied on all I have only received 1??

Not being too au fait with email protocols, is it because I am emailing to myself? Mandrill used to allow this and Sparkpost has allowed it once.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Mandrill changing

The json looks good. I bet your receipient is delaying or rejecting. Check sparkpost for rejects or delays.

[rderksen]

Re: Mandrill changing

Lance, have you logged on and checked your Sparkpost account to see what is happening?
I believe you should be able to see the status of each of the deliveries.