Embedding table into an email
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I have a WordPress page that I send out as an email newsletter. Everything looks fine, except the colors for the table are missing. Is there a way to embed the table from Tablepress into the email while maintaining the CSS?
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Ok, I have a solution. However, you must understand the requirements and shortcomings of emails first:
1) Emails cannot have <form> inside. If they do, they will marked as phishing/spam by most recipients.
2) Emails can’t access json or javascript because they also will be marked as phishing and spam messages.
3) Email programs will often strip out the <head> of an email. That means if you embedded CSS int he <head>, it will disappear. A workaround for this is to *also* place the CSS within the <body> of the email.So that means when you embed your table into an HTML email, you can only expect to have the table contents available. You will not be able to have the search box, or other niceties like column adjustments.
To make the HTML email, I just add a file in my WP installation called email.php and I put it in a directory called /email/. So if my WP is installed at domain.com, the email is found at domain.com/email/email.php. I then add this to the top of the email.php:
<?php require('../wp-blog-header.php'); ?>That one line of code will allow your email.php to act as if it is part of your WP installation.
Then I add the shortcode somewhere in the HTML body of the email.php like this:
<?php echo do_shortcode("[table id=15 hide_columns=all show_columns='A,B,G,K' /]"); ?>Then it works. Just copy the HTML source of domain.com/email/email.php from your browser and paste it into your email program to send.
The downside is without the CSS, the table will just be text. So it will look bad. If you load the CSS in the <body?> it will look better, but I have an even better idea:
Maybe allow TablePress to operate without any “outside” effects like json/css/etc. Instead just print a table and have CSS as part of the div to make the columns different colors. One way to do that is to allow some more parameters in the shortcode such as:
a) external_files=off [this means the table relies on no external styles or code files]
b) header_color=#669999 [this allows the header of the column to have specific color]
c) footer_color=#669966 [this allows the footer of the column to have specific color]
d) row_color_alternate=’#000066,#006666′ [this allows us to manually set the 2 colors to make each row an alternating color. The first color in the list is the first color on the top row below the header, if the header is given its own color]
e) table_border=2 [pixels for the border size]
f) table_padding=5 [pixels for the padding size]However, I found a bug, and I’m not sure if it a security issue….
If you login as admin to your WP within the same browser as you load domain.com/email/email.php you will see an “Edit” below the table. I actually didn’t pay attention the first time I did this, and I sent that to a few thousand members of a WP site I manage. So they could click on the Edit link and visit the WP admin login page. They still needed a password to login, so it was relatively safe, but I’m unsure why the Edit link always shows and how to remove it. Any ideas?
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