I am building a CMS for my company(using Rails 4, in case that matters) and nearly all of my users will be using Gmail.
Each user has a profile and I want it so when a user views another user's profile and clicks on their email address, Gmail will open with a new message to that user's email.
I imagine there'd be a way to do this using their API but so far I haven't found it.
There's no way I know of to specifically open Gmail; mailto always opens the default mail client, which can be set to Gmail.
See this guide (or direct your users to it) so that they can set Gmail as their default client: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/set-gmail-as-browser-default-email-client-ht
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I am creating a web application in Golang/HTML. I am implementing registration, sessions, email verification, and login.
My code works, however I have noticed some strange browser behavior. When the user registers for the first time, my application will send them an email containing a link with a unique nonce (number used once) in the url. This is to ensure that the user is able to receive email from us at that address and "verify their email", as is standard practice on many web applications.
Please click the following link to verify your account: http://localhost:8080/verify-email/55c17d2c
I noticed that when I receive this email, if I click on the link in the email, the browser will open the link in a new tab as expected, however, it will not send any cookies on requests associated with that tab.
But when I copy and paste the link into a new tab manually and press enter, it sends the cookies just fine. What gives? is this some sort of undocumented security feature? What should I do about this?
I used https://github.com/six-ddc/httpflow to capture a log of the HTTP requests and responses going between my web browser and my server application. I have two separate logs, one of them captured a registration flow where i clicked the link, and the other one captured a registration flow where i copy and pasted the link into a new tab.
Log where link in email was clicked: https://paste.cyberia.club/~forest/2f3fce7dcc71fc095341eeaefb33f20883c79886
Log where link was copy and pasted from email into url bar: https://paste.cyberia.club/~forest/0623f76cfee339e91d2213dd8f4c7710c6fa2797
Please note that I tried this on firefox and google chrome, I also tried it with a real domain and https certificate, got the same behavior in all browsers and setups.
Here are my constraints:
I want the application to work fine with javascript disabled, however, I'm open to javascript-based solutions if they are simple, secure, and make the site more enjoyable to use. For example, I am using a javascript that hashes passwords client side before sending to the server for login. But if javascript is disabled, the raw password will be sent.
I don't want the user to have to log in again after they click the link to verify their email address.
I don't want the link in the email address to represent a "free pass" into the user's account. I want to require the user to be already logged in (or somehow otherwise authenticated) before they can verify their email address. For example, if someone steals that email and clicks that link before the intended user does, I don't want the email thief to be able to take over the account.
OOPS I just figured this out, I wanted Lax SameSite policy on my cookies:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Cookies#SameSite_attribute
It takes three possible values: Strict, Lax, and None. With Strict, the cookie is sent only to the same site as the one that originated it; Lax is similar, except that cookies are sent when the user navigates to the cookie's origin site, for example, by following a link from an external site;
90% of my Google Apps Script/HTMLService web app is available to anonymous users, however user must be signed in with G-Suite account in order to access the remaining 10%.
Desired behavior is that if user is already logged in to G-Suite (e.g. read Gmail from that browser), the web app recognizes the user without prompting to log in again – as if you went to Google Calendar just after reading Gmail. If user isn’t logged in yet – he needs to be prompted to log in using #my_g-suite.com account when accessing the restricted features.
My first try was two app approach: one published as “available to anyone including anonymous” and another “available to members of the my_g-suite.com”. The problem with this approach is that 2nd app only shows log in screen if browser has no google identity. If user is logged in to regular, non-g-suite gmail, strange google Driver error is shown instead of login prompt. I posted question about this a while ago, no solution.
So instead I implemented a sign-in button using this guide. Behavior I’m seeing is not what I expected:
If user is already signed in with UserOne#my_g-suite.com prior to accessing the app (e.g. looked at G-Suite email account), Session.getActiveUser() on server side returns correct user ID, however googleUser.getBasicProfile().getEmail() on client has nothing.
If user has not signed in with G-Suite ID using prior to accessing the app and then signs in using the Sign In button on web app, googleUser.getBasicProfile().getEmail() returns correct user ID, however ), Session.getActiveUser() on server side returns nothing.
If user has signs in using the button as UserTwo#my_g-suite.com, no other G-Suite app recognizes it. So if user then signs in to UserOne#my_g-suite.com and comes back to the app, Session.getActiveUser() says it’s UserOne#my_g-suite.com and googleUser.getBasicProfile().getEmail() says it’s UserTwo#my_g-suite.com. Two conflicting identities simultaneously.
How do I make sign-in into my app be 1) seamless with other G-Suite services rather than having completely separate, app-only 2nd identity and 2) restricted to #my_g-suite.com?
Following #TheMaster advice I tried this:
Created a Google Sites site "login.my_g-suite.com" which is only available to g-suite users and has a single page which says "you are logged in to g-suite"
In my web app which runs as "me" and is "available to everyone, even anonymous", I implemented a check if Session.getActiveUser() is g-suite user. If not, I do window.open("https://login.my_g-suite.com") which opens log-in screen in the new tab as expected.
After user logs in, I reload web app. And here's the sad part:
If browser hasn't been used for non-G-Suite account (like regular Gmail) - all works great. Session.getActiveUser() shows newly logged in user ID
BUT if that browser has been logged in to non-G-Suite account, Session.getActiveUser() has no idea about the fact that I just logged in G-Suite in another tab (even after reloading web app). Which is back to square one.
Comparing this to Google's own apps, this behavior is not much different: e.g. if you read regular non-g-suite gmail, then go and log in to Google drive using G-Suite account, and then reload gmail - it doesn't take you to G-Suite Gmail automatically just because you logged in to G-Suite account on that browser. You need to explicitly tell Gmail that you want to use G-Suite account by invoking active-account-selection menu (round avatar icon on the right upper corner).
Looks like no matter what approach I take, I hit the same wall: the need to tell stand-alone Google App Script which Google identity is current. And I don't see any way of doing that.
What I stated above is no longer true due to recent change by Google. (2) now results in Error 404 instead of login screen.
Sign-in issues which a few days ago were only affecting stand-alone Google App Script apps now are plaguing entire G-Suite. Our volunteer first-responder organization got G-Suite mainly for the secure intranet site (members.my_g-suite.com) where we share internal protocols and documentation. It's built on new Google Sites and Google Team Drive. Before Wednesday attempt to access members.my_g-suite.com used to take to G-Suite login screen. Now it takes them to "404. That’s an error. The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.". The only workaround is to force users to log out of personal Gmail each time before accessing G-Suite, which is not a reasonable request for a volunteer using personal device. We feel like Google pulled the rug from under our feet. The only hope is that this is a temporary change and they'll revert it to how it was in the beginning of the week. We also confirmed that this change is not limited to our G-Suite.
This is because your web-app runs inside a iframe. You can force login by denying access to the web-app manually.
onload, Check Session.getActiveUser().getEmail() server side and see if it matches your domain,
If it does, proceed to load your actual web-app
If not, just provide the information that the user needs to login to your gsuite to access.
You can also
Proceed to open https://admin.google.com (or any url specific to your domain) in a another tab
See whether it's open and use setInterval to check the other window.close property. When closed, reload your web-app.
I have mailto: link in a web app that includes 'CC' and 'subject' fields. I would like these fields to have different values if the link will be opened int outlook or gmail. Is it possible to programmatically determine which email client is the user's default?
Firstly, Gmail is web based, and you need a local app to handle the mailto url. See How to register custom program to handle mailto protocol on Windows 7
Secondly, you would need to access the registry key to determine the mailto url handler, and you cannot do that from a script running inside a browser.
I would like to know if it's possible to provide an email certificate (signed by a recognised CA) so the user clicking on the mailto link can send encrypted email to the owner of the cert ?
hello#gmail.com
Is there any way to do that using the mailto link or using some JS ? Given the mailto link is handled by a local email client, should be possible ?
If there is no direct way to do this, how to make it?
One option is a web form for message sending, served via HTTPS. The server-side handler of the form would compose an encrypted mail on the server and then send it via SMTP. This provides almost the same level of security as direct encryption (given that your server is secure). Unfortunately there's no other simple way to do what you want. Of course, you can put a link for your .cer file download and tell the user to download the .cer file and use it to compose an encrypted mail, but how would you deal with GMail users and mobile users? Web form is more flexible and easier to use for the sender.
You can look up what you according to the current specification can do with a mailto URL in RFC 2368. You'll see that it only refers to the construction of the mail text and headers, not their encoding or encryption. There may be extensions for some mail clients, but that's not something one should generally count on.
Furthermore, Web mail users generally will have problems with such links anyways. Thus, for a solution that has to be usable by anyone, a scheme counting on some client side program is not a good choice.
Thus, some Web form as mentioned by #Eugene accessable only via https would best serve your requirements.
I have a web application that allows users to build a 'client list.' We want to add a feature that allows the user to send email campaigns to that client-list through our web app. Right now we just have two textarea's where the user can input the HTML & plain-text versions of their email, and our system will take care of sending out the emails.
We'd like to give the user the ability to construct the email visually (wysiwyg type editor) within our web application. Does anyone know of a web-based javascript plugin to build html emails?
Have always been a big fan of JWYSIWYG
https://github.com/akzhan/jwysiwyg