We have a number of customers that we have to send monthly invoices too. Right now, I'm managing a codebase that does SQL queries against our customer database and billing database and places that data into emails - and sends it.
I grow weary of maintaining this every time we want to include a new promotion or change our customer service phone numbers. So, I'm looking for a replacement to move more of this into the hands of those requesting the changes.
In my ideal world, I need :
A WYSIWYG (man, does anyone even say that anymore?) email editor that generates templates based upon the output from a Database Query.
The ability to drag and drop various fields from the database query into the email template.
Display of sample email results with the database query.
Web application, preferably not requiring IIS.
Involve as little code as possible for the end-user, but allow basic functionality (i.e. arrays/for loops)
Either comes with it's own email delivery engine, or writes output in a way that I can easily write a Python script to deliver the email.
Support for generic Database Connectors. (I need MSSQL and MySQL)
F/OSS
So ... can anyone suggest a project like this, or some tools that'd be useful for rolling my own?
(My current alternative idea is using something like ERB or Tenjin, having them write the code, but not having live-preview for the editor would suck...)
I think your looking for a reporting tool which is also capable of sending email. Sending a generared report in html or pdf shouldn't be to hard to do as well.
I've used JasperReports in the past for which I think it should fit your needs.
Another good solution is the pentaho reporting tool
You could easily write something on your own.. give them a basic edit control and allow them to use psuedo variables like {customername} {anothercustomerattribute} within the mail body.
On submit either send directly or save as template.
When the template is sent away the script automatically parses stuff like {customername} into the real customers name from the database.
Your own very very simple custom scriptlanguage :)
Everything else like loops and so on would be maintained on serverside. And if you want particular groups of customers to receive the letter, allow the enduser to select from selectboxes or whatever and do the rest on the serverside with pre-defined rules.
Related
I would like to send automated emails to a group of users present in my DB. The emails would contain data with dynamic content. Mostly a table with different set of items. I was looking to use mailchimp templates for that, but it doesn't seem to allow for the kind of dynamic content I am looking for. Essentially for each user, my code would come up with a json array of items to populate the table with.
I am at a loss as to where to get started there. Any interesting tools to do this kind of work, that can be called programmatically from python?
Is it possible to allow a JasperReports/JasperReports Server end user to write data back to the source database? For example, if a user is viewing a report that lists customer information, could the report be designed to allow the user to edit or write to a database field, such as a "Notes" field?
In general the answer to this is no - it's a reporting tool. If you have Jasperserver embedded into your web app you could have an html form which allows writing to the db and you may be able to link this to a report manually. If you really wanted to hack something together you could probably use a hyperlink to the backend and pass the note in as a parameter but this isn't what the tool is designed to do.
I often need to create similar, but very long HTML forms for a client. The forms contain some inter-dependent fields and lot of validations. Some images also need to be uploaded.
Then the client needs to check the database in the CPanel and export it from there.
I want to create something with easy interface which can create complicated forms. Also, client is asking for easy-to-operate back end. The CMS option looks like an overkill. I want to keep the site as lightweight as possible because of performance requirement.
Please suggest me the best path I should take. Should I try to develop everything from scratch? Should I use a CMS? Is there any particular CMS more suitable for the task?
We use ChronoForms along with Joomla 3.1 to create such forms. It has two modes, an easier one that limits the functionality but creation of forms is much easier. The other one offers the full capabilities of the engine but requires manual steps to do even simple things.
Having said that, ChronoForms is the most powerful web based forms designer I have come across. It seems they also support Wordpress now.
They have a drag-drop mechanism to design the forms. Validations are easy to do via check boxes for the standard ones. You can save the results into database tables, send emails, redirect users to specific pages, add captchas.
The backend allows you to view the records and create new tables based on the fields of the form. You can also export the result as CSV.
Does anyone have experiences with programmatic exports of data in conjunction with BaaS providers like e.g. parse.com or StackMob?
I am aware that both providers (as far as I can tell from the marketing talk) offer a REST API which will allow for queries against the database, not only to be used by mobile clients but also by e.g. custom web apps.
I am also aware that both providers offer a manual export of data (parse.com via their web interface, StackMob via support).
But lets say I would like to dump all data nightly, so that I can import it into a reporting system for instance. Or maybe simply to have an up-to-date backup.
In this case, I would need a programmatic way to export/replicate the data stored in the backend. Manual exports are not an option for obvious reasons.
The REST APIs offered however seem to be designed for specific queries, not for mass reads (performance?). Let alone the pricing - I assume none of the providers would be happy about a nightly X Gigabyte data export via their REST API, so their probably will be a price tag.
I just couldn't find any specific information on this topic so far, so I was wondering if anyone else has already gone through this. Also, any suggestions on StackMob/parse alternatives are welcome, especially if related to the data export topic.
Cheers, Alex
Did you see the section of the Parse REST API on Batch operations? Batch operations reduce the number of API calls needed to grab data so that you are not using a call for every row you retrieve. Keep in mind that there is still a limit (the default is 100, but you can set it to a maximum of 1000). That means you are still limited to pulling down 1000 rows per API call.
I can't comment on StackMob because I haven't used it. At my present job, we are using Parse and we wrote a C# app which compares the data in a Parse class with a SQL table and pulls down any changes.
I'm trying to make a page with 2 fields (email and feedback) and 1 button. When the user clicks on the button, a table on a page else where is filled in with the data, permanently.
Does anyone have recommendations of how I should do this? I'd like to avoid having a script send me an email, or writing to a database. But if I have to, which ever is easier to configure would be prefered.
Thanks,
Matt
So you want a comments system like you find on most blogs? You'll need to store those comments somewhere, probably in a database. As for how to do it, that would depend entirely on what you already know and what the site is currently written in. You could use PHP and MySql if you already have those skills, or ASP.Net/SQL Server, or if you want to be down with the cool kids you can use Ruby on Rails or Python/Django.
If you post what languages you already have experience in, and/or what the site is written in you might get a more specific answer :-)
There're 2 types of scripts: server side and client side. The client side script (JavaScript) stores info only for particular visitor on his computer and this can't be seen by anybody else.
You need a server side script to save feedback on the server. The language or technology depends on the hosting server you use. Not all hosting services allows server side scripts. You need first to find out what scripting languages and technologies are supported by your hosting provider. Then we can help you more.
ADD:
For an unexperienced persons I recommend to search for hosting services which has most needed functionality. Something like blogs, etc. On such services you could create pages that will have comments and feedback and many more.
While it may seem outdated it's not necessarily a bad design. You can use PHP or Perl (due to it's string parsing capabilities) and simply store the main page on the disk.
Here's your sudo code/design...
You'll need need an html page that looks as follows
<tr><td>email</td><td>comment 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>email 2</td><td>comment 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>email 3</td><td>comment 3</td></tr>
Then you'll need a php script page that will read this html file in and display it.
The php page will also contain code for dealing with a user submitted comment. When a user posts a comment you need to open the html page with the rows in it and append to that file.
You need to be careful with this design however because you may run into write concurrency issues if two people attempt to read the file at the same time. Add code to handle this gracefully accordingly.