iOS A simple app for (e-mail) templates

[JDFerguson]

Hi all,
I am a reporter that writes a lot of public records requests. Honestly, more than any reporter should ever have to. Sometimes, it is more than a dozen in any given week.

As is often the case, the need to send a request is at city hall when I’m far away from computer. While a laptop is practical, the reality is that I don’t own one – I bought an iPhone instead of a used laptop.

At first I thought I’d host a form online, but now I wonder if a better way isn’t to code a simple app for my iPhone.

It would have a few simple options, a pull-down menu (for e-mail addresses) some text that never changes, a small box to type in the jist of the request, and a button that hopefully sends the full text to the iPhone’s Mail app.

I am wondering if any iPhone app developers could tell me whether something like this is possible. I worry that the single thread iPhone cannot send information from one app (ie my simple app) to another (mail app)

It seems to me that I could program this as a widget, but I am not sure whether the underlying framework is the same. I'm good with html, css but willing to learn other programming languages (I am slowly working with Ruby.)

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

 

[admanimal]

This would actually be a pretty simple app to make, and is very possible. The Mail app happens to be one that you can send data to, via opening a mailto: URL. You can specify the body of the email as well as the address and subject in the URL.

 

[JDFerguson]

Starting to write it tonight.

Thank you very much for your reply, admanimal.

I'm off to look for app tutorials, I'm guessing it is too early for actual books....

Any suggestions for noobs?

 

[slycrel]

Start by looking at apple's sample code. They have some really good examples that cover most basic things you might want to do. Good luck. =)