I am trying to get the default phone number for sending a text message for an iPhone Address Book contact using ABPerson. I understand that ABMultiValue is to be used. But I cannot find out if there is a way to determine the default text message phone number (or for that manner, the default phone call phone number, email or address). I am about to grab the first object for each, but I am concerned that, for a text message, the phone may be a land line or otherwise unable to receive texts. Any advice on how to approach this matter would be appreciated.
You can extract specific values for home, work and cell phone number from the ABMultiValue. You will probably want to use the value corresponding to kABPersonPhoneMobileLabel and/or kABPersonPhoneIPhoneLabel to send a text message. If neither of those values exist, choose the first available phone number.
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I program with PHP and I'm familiar with getting data from PayPal's IPN. I need to send custom data to ebay and get it back when payment is made. For example, if sold 1 Widget on ebay and that widget has a stock number of 12345A, I receive data back from PayPal. I get things like customer's name, address, item name, etc. But, unless I include that stock number in my title, I don't see any way to get that data back from PayPal. I don't want to use ebay's limited title space for including my stock numbers. I realize I could do it if I had another database to store ebay's item numbers and cross reference them with my stock numbers, but I don't want to do that.
I have noticed that when data comes back from PayPal after an ebay sale, it includes the custom variable and that variable has a large number in assigned to it. I have no idea what that is. I've also tried using ebay's custom label feature that's found in Turbo Lister and Selling Manager Pro. I was hoping that would be sent back in PayPal's custom variable, but no luck. Any ideas?
As you've discovered, it looks like it's some internal id number uniquely identifying each eBay order. You can probably forget about specifying a value for this field as it isn't documented anywhere.
The best solution to your problem is to use the eBay API. GetSingleItem will return information about an item given the item id.
The ItemSpecifics list will contain any item specific data that the seller has entered about the product. In my case, I added a custom field called SKU to the eBay item. Just add itemspecifics to your include selector. The call can be executed with a GET request:
http://open.api.ebay.com/shopping?callname=GetSingleItem&IncludeSelector=ItemSpecifics&appid=YOURAPPID=515&ItemID=ITEMIDOFINTEREST
What you get back will contain those custom fields you added to your item:
..
<ItemSpecifics>
<NameValueList>
<Name>MPN</Name>
<Value>MyPartModelA</Value>
</NameValueList>
<NameValueList>
<Name>SKU</Name>
<Value>123-456</Value>
</NameValueList>
</ItemSpecifics>
..
I'm using the variables found on this page: https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/Appx_websitestandard_htmlvariables/#id08A6HI0J0VU
to try to pre-populate the form data for buyers when they purchase things on my site. The trouble is, some of the fields are getting filled in, while others are not. First name, last name, telephone number, and email address work without a problem.
However, the country is always set to the USA, and address1, address2, city, and zip are left blank. I'm sure my code is correct. I'm currently using the sandbox for testing. Has anyone else experienced this problem and can tell me what the solution is? Any help would be appreciated.
Make sure you pass over all the address fields. If you do not pass over one of the variables, the address will not be displayed. If this still does not work, can you provide an example of what you are sending over and list what is not getting displayed when you test this and I will look into it further. However, make sure you are passing over all of the address fields.
I have an app with partial copying of native Contacts app functionality. Then, I meet such bug: on some devices, I create new contact, add phone number with kABPersonPhoneIPhoneLabel, save it and read later, the number has no label! When investigated, I found that issue occurs only if Exchange account contacts sync (Google in my case) is turned on. Also, check the list of labels to choose in cases when Exchange sync is ON and OFF. (please note, that you should have no contacts in address book)
Exchange is OFF, phone numbers available labels are:
mobile, iPhone, home, work, main, home fax, work fax, other fax,
pager, other
and user can add custom labels.
Exchange is ON, the labels are:
mobile, home, work, home fax, work fax, pager, assistant, car,
company main, radio
and user CAN NOT add custom labels
My app handle only standard labels, mentioned in first case.
So, the question is: how can I retrieve available labels list, and how to know is user allowed to add custom labels or no?
Thank you for answer, or any related info about this.
You can add labels with:
bool ABMultiValueAddValueAndLabel (
ABMutableMultiValueRef multiValue,
CFTypeRef value,
CFStringRef label,
ABMultiValueIdentifier *outIdentifier
);
I have this account creation email that is sent out to anyone who is trying to create an account as I need to authenticate that they are who they say they are.
However, my issue here is that the URL where they need to click when they receive my email is too long and some email clients do not handle that very well and sometimes truncates the URL thus making the URL invalid when clicked.
Because the URL contains the domain name, the hashed email and a long activation code. It looks something like this.
http://domain.com/activation?email=75a5867d3df134bededbaf24ff17624d&key=8fecb20817b3847419bb3de39a609afe
While some email clients are ok with this but some are not...And I don't want to use HTML email and rather stick with plain/text email. Also I heard horrible stories using URL shorteners so I am not sure if I should use them...
Any insights in this area is appreciated!
I would definitely agree with Jason: shorten your url.
Think of what you really need.
Most likely the email address is in the database already, so you can refer to if with a short ID (let's say 7 numbers max). Your signature can be something very simple as substring (base64_url(md5(email+salt)), 0, 5). 5 base64 characters are 64^5=about 1 billion possibilities. This is probably secure enough (and what would the real damage be if someone registered with a wrong email address). So your url would be http://domain.com/activation?email=1234&key=aD5Y_, http://domain.com/activation?e=1234&k=aD5Y_ or even http://domain.com/activation?e=1234aD5Y_ . In the last format you know the last 5 characters are the key, so the rest is the id. Note that the code example assumes md5 to return in an 8-bit string format (and not hex string format), and base64_url uses a url safe base64 method. Also, some background info on a salt.
If your email address has a long id or needs to be encoded in the url as well, or the above is not short enough yet, consider an even shorter form. Basically this will result in making your own url shortener. Just before you insert the link into the email, generate some random 5 character string. Insert this string as key into memcached (or the database), with as value the original url. Then your url could be http://domain.com/redirect?key=rT-tW . When you see this in your app, just retrieve the original url from the database/memcached and redirect there.
Do make sure that your system is robust against the following:
Someone enters an email address (their real email), you send the link
That person changes their email address into something fake on the website before clicking the link, you send a new email to the new (fake) email address
They now click the link from the first email and your website confirms their email address in the second (fake) form.
One way to do this is make sure to use the email address itself (and not for instance just the user id) in the key generation, as suggested above.
I am trying to embed an ID into an email so that when a recipient replies to an email that my system sends out, my system can pick it up and match the two together.
I have tried appending a custom header, however this is stripped out when the user replies.
I have tried embedding an HTML comment within the email, but outlook does not seem to keep comments when a reply email is created.
Worst case scenario, I can manually try and match the sent and received emails by time span or have a visible tag within the message body.
Does anyone know of a more elegant solution?
Thanks in advance
Email messages already contain such an identifiers, called Message-ID. And there's even a way to send which message you're replying to by sending that ID in a header called In-Reply-To. That's done by pretty much all email clients, that's how they usually do their threading.
It's defined in RFC 822 (yep that's pretty old) and probably re-defined and refined in more modern versions of that.
I have seen a method that includes a one byte image with a unique name that's linked to the user. When they view the email and download the images, your HTTP server will record a hit for that unique image. Of course the user needs to display images, but you can include a message in the body asking them to display the images. We actually include content in an image so they need to show images.
If your incoming e-mail can handle +foo or -foo suffixes, use that.
Many e-mail systems can route user+foo#example.com or user-foo#example.com
to user#example.com. You can replace foo with some kind of identifier.
Several mailing list servers use this for tracking bounces.
While I can't say for certain, my investigation in that sort of matter some time ago yielded the following "conclusion":
Headers are transformed a lot
Message bodies are transformed a lot
This is partly because, I suspect, of:
Need to protect users from malicious intentions
Need to perform "targeted marketing"
I have seen "unique codes" flying around in clear text in the email body but I would suggest having a unique identifier embedded in the return address instead.
The usual approach is to place the id in the subject line and/or somewhere visible in the message text and informing the recipient that he should not modify the subject or quote the original mail when responding.