Using form submission data in email subject line leads to error?

[dethompsOWU]

So, I have a form that, when submitted, sends an email summarizing all the fields and whatnot...the usual sort of thing.

For the subject line of the email it sends out, however, I used this:

{$ANSWER_firstPublicationDate}, {$ANSWER_secondPublicationDate}, {$ANSWER_category}

(So, it should look something like this: "20110811, 20110816, Campus News".)

And, when it sends out the message upon an actual form submission, it works/looks the way I would expect it to.

However, when I'm in the back-end and I tell it to send a Test Email using a random submission, I get the following error in a popup:

Couldn't load page: http://forms.owu.edu/formtools/global/co...mission_id=

This functionality works fine for messages associated with this (and other) forms that don't inject submission data into the subject line. Curiously, even if I change this particular message's subject line to plain text (even a single character, such as "a"), I get the same error message.

Any idea what might be happening and/or how it might have happened?

Thanks,

Doug Thompson
Manager of Web and Electronic Communcations
Ohio Wesleyan University

[Ben]

Hi Doug,

Curiously, even if I change this particular message's subject line to plain text (even a single character, such as "a"), I get the same error message.

This is telling. My hunch is that the placeholders are probably a red herring - at least, I can't see any reason why they'd cause problems. Even if the placeholders were invalid (e.g. had a typo in them), they'd simply be ignored. It's possible that if they had some unusual chars in them (newlines, maybe...?) it could mess with the outgoing email, but I doubt it...

Are you using the Swift Mailer module to send the emails or the default PHP mail()?

Also, any chance I would be permitted access to debug the thing on your system? (I've probably asked you this half a dozen times, so I apologize if I forget).

- Ben

[dethompsOWU]

I am using the Swift Mailer module.

As far as I can tell, there are no special characters in the subject lines or placeholder names or anything. Like I said, even if I change the subject line to "a", the error happens.

When you say "permitted access to debug the thing on your system", what exactly are you thinking of?

At any rate, since this only appears to affect the "test send" functionality (which I rarely use once everything's up-and-running), this may be a "safe to forget about it" issue at the moment...

[Ben]

At any rate, since this only appears to affect the "test send" functionality (which I rarely use once everything's up-and-running), this may be a "safe to forget about it" issue at the moment...

Ah, you may be right! There's actually a lot more work involved with the test submission than the actual submission, ironic though that may be. With the test submission it has to convert all the email data into JSON and pass it back to the client to display, so it's probably going wrong in that step.

For debugging, I was wondering it I could get temporary FTP access and Form Tools access so I could log in, reproduce the problem and get to the bottom of it. But I totally understand if that's not acceptable on security grounds (or any other reason).

All the best -

Ben

[dethompsOWU]

We'll plan to leave it alone for the time being.

Unfortunately, I can't really grant the level of access you would want/need to do the debugging.

If the problem crops up again and/or becomes a larger issue than just an annoyance solely for me, I'll definitely let you know.

Thanks!