CakePHP 1.3: Processing an Email Form Using Ajax

Question

I have an application I am developing where the user is allowed to email the article he/she is viewing. I am using Ajax to process this. Basically the user adds his/her email/name and the email of person the message is supposed to be sent to. I am having a problem passing an array of data to my cakephp function. The data is being placed in the array accurately, but I cannot see it in my CakePHP function specifically the email that is being sent.

My Javascript Code

 var dataString = new Array();
            dataString[0] = name;
            dataString[1] = email;

    // This will display Joe Schmoe, email@domain.com
    alert(dataString); return false;

        $('#contact-area').html("<div id='Sending' style='margin-left:410px;color:red;border:1px solid red'>Enviando...Por favor, aguarde um momento!</div>");


    $.ajax({
  type: "POST",
  url: "/articles/enviar",
  data: dataString,
  success: function() {
    $('#Sending').hide();
    $('#contact-area').html("<div id='message' style='margin-left:410px;color:red;border:1px solid red'></div>");
    $('#message').html("<h3>A Sua Mensagem Ja Foi Enviada!</h3>")
    .append("<p>Obrigado.</p>")
    .hide()

My Controller Action

function enviar(){  
//debug($emailInfo);
        // Send email with new password
    $this->Email->to = 'xxxxxxx@yahoo.com';//testing without array
    $this->Email->subject = 'Hello';//$emailInfo['name'].' - Noticia Na Bravanews';
    $this->Email->from = 'xxxxxx@bravanews.com';//testing without array
$this->Email->sendAs = 'html';
$this->Email->template = 'enviar_email';
$this->Email->smtpOptions = array(
    'port'=>'465',
    'timeout'=>'30',
    'host' => 'ssl://smtp.gmail.com',
    'username'=>'xxxxx@gmail.com',
    'password'=>'xxxxxxxx'
);
$this->Email->delivery = 'smtp';


    // this displays as nothing
$this->set('emailInfo', $this->data);


if($this->Email->send()){
    return true;
}else{
    return false;
}
}

And my email template

Hello,<br />
<?php e($emailInfo[0]); ?> sugeriu que leias a seguinte notícia na Bravanews.<br>
<?php e($emailInfo[1]); ?><br>
Por favor clique no link abaixo:<br /><br>
<?php debug($emailInfo); ?>

How do I go about fixing this issue. I cannot transpose anything to the email template so I can print or email...

Answer 1

Data sent by the browser should be available in $this->data. Is this not the case?

If it isn't the problem is with the Ajax call not sending the data. Maybe you're not using the layout jquery expects.

Answer 2

You must send variables in an array named data so that you can find them in $this->data .

Else in CakePHP 1.3 you can not pass parameters to the view by using the $this->set() . For me I create my own component based on the Email CakePHP component to give the possibility to pass parameters to the view.

       data : {'data[Model][email]' : email, 'data[Model][name]' : name},