Database Discussion - Auto Response to Search

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Auto Response to Search

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Category: General Discussion
Forum Name: Database Discussion
Forum Description: Discussion and chat on database related topics.
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=5483
Printed Date: 30 March 2026 at 3:53am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Auto Response to Search

Posted By: cyndi
Subject: Auto Response to Search
Date Posted: 03 September 2003 at 10:24am

The company I work for creates products that we sell to consumers through retail chains and various other specialty stores. Because of competition among the the retailers we can not list their names and locations directly on our web site. As a result, we are innundated with requests received via our "contact us" form requesting this very exact thing. We are permitted to respond to these individual e-mail inquiries on a one-on-one basis or over the phone, but that has become very time consuming for our customer service department. Is there any way that I can create a "dealer locator" page where the user types in their zip code, and say, an "auto response" e-mail is generated and returned to them with the names and locations where they can purchase our products? Or, is there a better way to achieve something similar?

Replies:

Posted By: michael
Date Posted: 03 September 2003 at 12:35pm

Would be actually fairly easy to do. Of course depending on where you customers might be coming from. If it is national (US) you can get a ZIP database from various locations over the net.
I created a http://webapp.us/app/distancecalc/ - distance calculator some time ago which I never cared to make too accurate but could be done by refining the formula.
Basically the only difference to your solution would be that it searches all dealers in the database against the origin zip, creates a set of all dealers that are within a specified range (or just the closest) and use any email object to email that information.
Let me know if you want above script to get an idea about the zip code calculation (us only).

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Posted By: cyndi
Date Posted: 03 September 2003 at 12:57pm

Thanks, Michael. That is a really nice tool! The part that has me stumped though is the "email object" part that you mentioned. Do you have a link where I can go to read up on how to go about doing that to be able to generate the auto-response?

Posted By: michael
Date Posted: 03 September 2003 at 1:40pm

You are on the right site for that already. Bruce has two tutorials that should help you achieve what you want. The first is for http://www.webwiz.net/asp/tutorials/email_using_cdonts_tutorial.asp - CDonts which comes with W2000, though I do not prefer it as I don't find it too robust.
The other one describes http://www.webwiz.net/asp/tutorials/email_using_jmail_tutorial.asp - jmail . Thus the tutorial should give you a general idea and you would be able to use any with just minor modification. There tons of components out there like ASPMail, ASPEmail etc. doing a search on google or aspin.com will reveal them.

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Posted By: cyndi
Date Posted: 03 September 2003 at 1:44pm

Thanks a million for all the help, I'll check it out!