Email Your Legislator Form: How?

[clayrains]

I am working on a website and I need to create a way that users can send their
state legislators a pre-written email message directly from the website.
Ideally, I'd like for it to work like this... 1) The user clicks an 'Email
Your Senator' link on the site. 2) The user is automatically taken to the first
page that contains all the fields were they enter their address. 3) Based on
the user's unput, their address analyzed, their 9 digit zip code is determined,
the user's appropriate senatorial district is determined, then the senators
name and email are determined. 4) The user is then automatically taken to the
second page that will contain a text box containing the pre-written message
directed at that individual senator, which the user can modify if desired, and
then the user can simply click a 'Submit' button sending the message to that
senator's email address. This may be asking too much but this is really what
I'd like to do. I'm just confused by all the tutorials and other info on forms
like this that are out there and can't find anything that deals with my unique
project. Can anyone help me? I would be REALLY APPRECIATIVE if someone can give
me a fairly simple expplanation of how to do this, whether it be using
ColdFusion or even Frontpage or Dreamweaver or any other possible way.

[brokerandy25]

I am not going to tell you how to do every thing every step of the way but I
will give you the basics. First off you need a database with a table in it
that has these columns ID,Zipcode,SenatorName,SenatorEmailAddress You will need
a page with form fields that will allow for someone to enter their relevant
information Wrap these form fields in a the <cfform> tags. Then your form
action= should be your mail page On your mail page Run a query on your
database table, based upon the form field where people put in their zipcode
ex.: select * From TABLENAME Where ZipCode = '#FORM.ZipCode# ' Have hidden
text fields whose default value are any of the information you want to send
with the email and one text field needs to be the senators email address from
your query Have your textmessage box set up on this page with the default
value for your message as te text. Have all of these wrapped in a form field
and submit button sends them to thank you page. on thank you page use <cfmail>
tag. Or you can do it all through Java Script. To do this you will need
Coldfusion though and Dreamweaver really helps too. Wouldn't use Frontpage.
First off it is a microsoft product and it doesn't play together with
coldfusion any where as well as dreamweaver.

[brokerandy25]

I am not going to tell you how to do every thing every step of the way but I
will give you the basics. First off you need a database with a table in it
that has these columns ID,Zipcode,SenatorName,SenatorEmailAddress You will need
a page with form fields that will allow for someone to enter their relevant
information Wrap these form fields in a the <cfform> tags. Then your form
action= should be your mail page On your mail page Run a query on your
database table, based upon the form field where people put in their zipcode
ex.: select * From TABLENAME Where ZipCode = '#FORM.ZipCode# ' Have hidden
text fields whose default value are any of the information you want to send
with the email and one text field needs to be the senators email address from
your query Have your textmessage box set up on this page with the default
value for your message as te text. Have all of these wrapped in a form field
and submit button sends them to thank you page. on thank you page use <cfmail>
tag. Or you can do it all through Java Script. To do this you will need
Coldfusion though and Dreamweaver really helps too. Wouldn't use Frontpage.
First off it is a microsoft product and it doesn't play together with
coldfusion any where as well as dreamweaver.

[clayrains]

Randy,

I just want to say thank you very much for the advice on forms. I think this
will be enough to at least get me going in the right direction. If I get stuck
I can always post again. Thanks so much again!