I ave a contact form (VS 2010 / VB / .net4), and when the client fills out the form, I get an email — which I like, but ….
For instance, here’s an e-mail I got:
Email: ivy_league_alum@yahoo.com
Subject: Do you guys integrate PPT?
Message: I’m looking for a PPT integrator in the Michigan area.
First_Name: Tim
Last_Name: Dewar
Organization: American Axle
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like
Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.75 Safari/535.7IP Address: 184.60.79.96
Server Date & Time: 1/13/2012 11:28:59 AM
But I’m expecting a lot of more emails than I had originally anticipated. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I can do? Is it possible to upload the responses into an Excel file, or something? Or does anybody have a better suggestion on how to organize this if I get many more emails than expected? Thanks!
Why stop at an Excel file? You will soon find this as unwieldy as getting bombarded by emails. Database the responses. There are many ways to do this with asp.net. The microsoft databases are the best fit: SQL Server and SQL Server express. These will tie in nicely with Visual Studio.
You are not limited to MS databases either. Here is a MYSQL – ASP.net tutorial
There may be a little more pain going this way, as you’ll then want to build a way to view what has gone into the database but it will serve you so much better in the long run.
It is possible to write to an excel file or CSV or XML file or any flat file format. However, in my opinion it is more trouble that its worth. You have to factor in concurrent read/writes, access permissions, transactional control, etc. It is all possible but it is not what these files are designed for. It is, however, exactly what databases are designed for.
Use the right tool for the job, which in my opinion, is a database.