An Auto Selection Puzzler

Hi Jerry

You can do it with Javascript. Easiest way is to alter the foreach loops so that each email list is inside its own div with a particular ID, like so:

<div id="list1">

email
email
email
email
...

</div>

Then add a button at the top of each list to trigger the selection. Again, amend the foreach loops so that each button gets the right id:

<button onclick="copylist(1)">Copy list</button>

Then here's the Javascript, which you put somewhere in the header:

<script>

function copylist(id)
{
    var text = $("#list"+id).html(); // this gives you everything in the div
    window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", text);
}

</script>

Basically this should give you a popup box where you can just hit Ctrl+C. You can't normally access the clipboard directly because of security. Here's the Stackoverflow question about that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400212/how-to-copy-to-the-clipboard-in-javascript?lq=1

If you don't know how to amend the foreach loops, just let me know. All you really need to do is start a counter running that increments by one for each list, and then echo the counter in the div line:

<div id="list<?php echo $counter; ?>">

Hope this helps!

Thank you Claire,

I'll give it a try. And then add it to my CMSB Cookbook ( http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com ) as a new recipe.

And welcome to the IT Team

Best,

Jerry Kornbluth

Thanks :) let me know if you have any issues with it.

Hi Claire,

Sorry, but obviously I’m doing something wrong.

I started by placing the function in the head of the page as you suggested:

<script>
function copylist(id)
{
    var text = $("#list"+id).html(); // this gives you everything in the div
    window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", text);
}
</script>


Then I amended the foreach loop for one list as a test:

<div id="list1">
<button onclick="copylist(1)">Copy list</button>
 <?php foreach ($email_signupRecords as $record): ?>
 <?php if (($record['email'] && $record['hidden'] == 0 && $record['confirmed'] == 1) && ($record['remove']== 0 || $record['remove']== "")): ?>
<?php echo ($record['email']) ?><br />
<?php endif ?>
<?php endforeach ?>
</div>


 

It doesn’t seem to matter if the “Button” is inside the div or outside, or whether I change the button from "copylist(1)" to "copylist(list1)".

When I load the page, all I get is an almost white background button that says Copy List that does nothing when clicked.

You can see the result at http://ericaminer.com/emaillistA.php
Log in with the Cookbook credentials that I sent you.

Thanks for you help,

Jerry Kornbluth

Hi Jerry

Sorry about this, I thought you were using jQuery for some reason. That solution requires the jQuery libraries.

Here's the function rewritten for vanilla JS:

<script>
function copylist(id)
{
    var divcontents = document.getElementById('list'+id);
    var text = divcontents.innerHTML;
    window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", text);
}
</script>

Hi Claire,

That certainly works better.

Also turns out the "Button" should be outside the <div> and styling the "Button" took care of the background color.

Just one detail left to sort out.

The line breaks are copied along with the email addresses and change the format of the list from one per line, to plain text with <br> in between each of the addresses.

IE: xxxx@gmail.com<br>yyyy@gmail.com<br>zzzz@gmail.com<br> etc.

When they need to be:

xxxx@gmail.com
yyyy@gmail.com
zzzz@gmail.com
etc.

Thanks,

Jerry Kornbluth

Sure - all you should need is a regex replace. Change the function like so:

<script>
function copylist(id)
{
    var divcontents = document.getElementById('list'+id);
    var text = divcontents.innerHTML;
    var finaltext = text.replace(/\n/g, "<br>");
    window.prompt("Copy to clipboard: Ctrl+C, Enter", finaltext);
}
</script>

That should change the <br> tags to linebreaks. (You'll have to change it to <br /> in the expression above if that's what the breaks look like in the HTML.)

Hi Claire,

Sorry to be a pain...

I'm getting closer.

I think you may have reversed the /\n/g and "<br>"

The closest that I could get to something that works is:

<script>
function copylist(id)
{
    var divcontents = document.getElementById('list'+id);
    var text = divcontents.innerHTML;
    var finaltext = text.replace("<br>", /\n/g);
    window.prompt("Copy to Clipboard: CMD (CTL) +C To Copy - Press OK", finaltext);
}
</script>

But there's obviously something still wrong with the syntax, because the result is:

xxxx@cox.net/\n/gyyyy@bizmailtoday.com<br>zzzz@hotmail.com<br>aaaa@gmail.com<br>bbbb@gmail.com<br>etc.

The first <br> gets replaced with /\n/g and the rest are left alone.

Thanks for sticking with this.

Jerry Kornbluth

Sorry about this Jerry, regex stuff always catches me out for some reason.

Try this:

var finaltext = text.replace("<br>", "\n");