Developing ColdFusion MX Applications with CFML
Sending and Receiving E-Mail

Using ColdFusion with mail servers

Adding e-mail to your ColdFusion applications lets you respond automatically to user requests. You can use e-mail in your ColdFusion applications in many different ways, including the following:

• Trigger e-mail messages based on users' requests or orders.
• Allow users to request and receive additional information or documents through e-mail.
• Confirm customer information based on order entries or updates.
• Send invoices or reminders, using information pulled from database queries.

ColdFusion offers several ways to integrate e-mail into your applications. To send e-mail, you generally use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). To receive e-mail, you use the Post Office Protocol (POP) to retrieve e-mail from the mail server. To use e-mail messaging in your ColdFusion applications, you must have access to an SMTP server and/or a valid POP account.

In your ColdFusion application pages, you use the cfmail and cfpop tags to send and receive e-mail, respectively. The following sections describe how to use the ColdFusion e-mail features and show examples of these tags.

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