Add on to deliver virtual products by email?

[emh999]

Hi,

I'm considering developing an Addon that would give customers the option of taking delivery of virtual products (PDFs, etc) via email instead of via the normal download process. Before undertaking this, I'd like to know if anyone else out there might be interested in this functionality as well or has already built a similar solution. Please do let me know.

Thanks,

Ed

[niccol]

What do you mean by via email?

1. A system where the document is sent in a separate email after the event.
2. A system where the document is attached to the order confirmation email.

I have built a gift certificate thing for a client where the gift certificate, which is just an image with a unique coupon code on it, is attached to the order confirmation email. Which is not that hard. The thing is that in my experience adding attachments to emails can be a bit unstable/flaky on some servers. On some servers it seems to work fine. Just my thoughts. I don't claim to be an expert about those kind of things ;-)

[RodG]

The thing is that in my experience adding attachments to emails can be a bit unstable/flaky on some servers. On some servers it seems to work fine. Just my thoughts. I don't claim to be an expert about those kind of things ;-)

FWIW, I think you'll find your experience in this regard is pretty much the as everyone else's that have attempted the same thing. There are some servers that are setup explicitly to *disallow* such attachments (all in the name of 'security'), while other servers haven't been set up to either allow or disallow them, which means they'll work *if* the supporting software *happens* to be installed on the server in the first place, and finally there are the servers being run by knowledgeable people that appreciate the need for this functionality and actually set things up so that it works both reliable and securely.
Alas, the latter appears to be the minority, and the majority using the luck of their particular installation rather than allowing or disallowing by design (a poor way to run a server IMO, but that's the way things seem to be these days)

Annoyingly, many of those that rely on the luck of their particular installations can't/won't be 'educated', and if anyone complains that attachments don't work with their servers aren't likely to get any help, but are generally fobbed of with 'we don't allow it because of security reasons', rather than the *real* reason that they don't have a clue how to make it work.

Cynical bugger aren't I?

Cheers
Rod

[emh999]

The idea is #1

1. A system where the document is sent in a separate email after the event.

Our products are zipped (*.zip format) already and we've never had an email server problem with emailing them to customers in this format when we need to.

Regards,

Ed

[DrByte]

File attachments are a huge contributor to getting emails binned as spam and of blacklisting the servers from which the emails originate. Use with MUCH caution. ESPECIALLY when you're automating such a process.
One-off emails here and there, especially when originating from a bona fide human, may not get flagged, but automated emails originating from a webserver are heavy-weighting red flags that tip off the spam alarms on email servers. Tread carefully lest you lose the ability to send *any* emails from your store at all.

Since you said you want to send a separate email after the main order-confirmation email, your custom coding will probably want to hook the NOTIFY_ORDER_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL notifier point using your own custom observer class. You'll need to loop through every order item all over again and send out all your additional separate emails after doing corresponding lookups on each line item.

[emh999]

Thanks for the heads up!