Email To Fax?

[smashing]

I have been approached by a client who wants me to design a form on his website for him. I can easily do this using PHP as the form parser and then send the information collected to him via email or write it to a file on the server.

Problem is; he does not want to have to check his email, rather he'd like to get everything in the form of a fax sent to his fax machine in his office!!!
Is this beyonds PHP's scope? If so, any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[sleipnir214]

It's not outside the scope of PHP -- it's a pretty well-rounded language. However, it would be a major pain to do it.

You can, however, invoke external programs from within PHP. Depending on your platform you may be able to invoke some fax-driving software to send the fax, but have PHP control what's sent.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[smashing]

Well, if the PHP is on the my clients web hosts' server and the software is on his local machine, then that's probably no good for starters, right?

 

[sleipnir214]

Yeah. The first requirement is that the software be available on both machines.

There is an alternative. There are companies out there that provide email-to-fax services (Google "email to fax&quot. You could just have PHP forward an email of the data to one of these services.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[DRJ478]

Here's an idea:
You can send an e-mail to one of the free e-mail to FAX servers:

http://www.tpc.int/tpc_home.html

The above URL is a sample for that. No PHP involved beyond sending the e-mail to the correct address.

 

[smashing]

Thanks to both of you as always!