Invoke / click a mailto link with JQuery / JavaScr

Question

I'd like to invoke a mailto link from JavaScript - that is I'd like a method that allows me to open the email client on the users PC, exactly as if they had clicked on a normal mailto link.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use window.location.href here, like this:

window.location.href = "mailto:[e-mail]";

Answer 2

You can avoid the blank page issue discussed above by instead using .click() with a link on the page:

document.getElementById('mymailto').click();
...
<a href="mailto:...." id="mymailto" style="display:none"></a>

Answer 3

the working answer for me, tested in chrome, IE and firefox together with outlook was this

window.location.href = 'mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Hello there&body=This is the body';

%0d%0a is the new line symbol of the email body in a mailto link

%20 is the space symbol that should be used, but it worked for me as well with normal space

Answer 4

Actually, there is a possibillity to avoid the empty page.

I found out, you can simply insert an iframe with the mailto link into the dom. This works on current Firefox/Chrome and IE (also IE will display a short confirm dialog).

Using jQuery, I got this:

var initMailtoButton = function()
{
    var iframe = $('<iframe id="mailtoFrame" src="mailto:[e-mail]" width="1" height="1" border="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>');
    var button = $('#mailtoMessageSend');    
    if (button.length > 0) {            
        button.click(function(){
            // create the iframe
            $('body').append(iframe);
            //remove the iframe, we don't need it any more
            window.setTimeout(function(){
                iframe.remove();    
            }, 500);

        });
    }
}