By georgiebon on

I am trying to generate a fax from a form on a Drupal page and wonder if anyone has done this before. If so, please could you tell me how you did it?
Thanks,

georgina

Comments

dublin drupaller’s picture

dublin drupaller commented

Hi Georgina

Interesting idea.

You could adapt the printer friendly module or email this page module.

adapting the print this page module might be easier, as all you're doing is customizing the print.tpl.php file that comes with the module to be a fax header.

you could pull the current username and automatically insert that in FROM field. ditto for other profile fields.

the user could then be instructed to go to the browser FILE menu to activate their FAX software. Usually under PRINT -> SEND FAX

Does that make sense? Or did you want Drupal to send the fax for you?

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

georgiebon’s picture

georgiebon commented

Thanks Dub - I was hoping that I would be able to use Drupal to send the fax, or at least install some software that would help Drupal to do this.

georgina

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

The usual way to send faxes from a server is via hylafax. It's been around for years, and is included in many Linux distributions. It does require a fax modem plugged into a phone line. Taking a Web form submission and passing it to hylafax for delivery is fairly trivial.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

There is this service and it could be customised to work with drupal, perhaps:
http://www.tpc.int/tpc_home.html

There is also www.writetothem.com (previously the highly successful faxyourmp.com) that lets people in UK fax their MPs. Their software is under an Affero GPL licence, so if you are thinking long term, it's worth integrating it with drupal.

----
Acknowledging a reply to your question motivates the replier to answer more.

Souvent22’s picture

Souvent22 commented

just wanted to follow this post. perhaps it's a module i'll make in the near future.

georgiebon’s picture

georgiebon commented

A fax module would be wonderful - I'll keep an eye out for it :)

georgina

Souvent22’s picture

Souvent22 commented

Just wanted to update this thread...I am starting work on a fax module for drupal. Lookin for something in the next week or so. I may need help/input, as I have found that I will have to make a windows and a linux implementation. yay, go me. :). k, off to sleep for now.

3B’s picture

3B commented

Souvent22 ... i'm going to work to something like this related to inbound faxes ...

task
I want to store faxes as drupal nodes and setting node.uid to the first uid that will present sender fax number in a specific field of the user profile ... example: cangrande meomorized +39045503604 in his profile - fax field - ... whan cangrande send a fax to drupal via hylafax, the system recognize the sender number and create a node with uid set to cangrande's uid

if you think we can agree to work on a common fax.module ... organizing work load! what about?

regards
cangrande

p.s. i do not know ho to partecipate in developing for drupal, but i can write php codes ... :-)

Souvent22’s picture

Souvent22 commented

Awesome, yes, I will be in touch. I have the skeleton of the module started. Hopefully get to the details of it soon. Are you good with Linux or with Visual Basic/Windows programming?

3B’s picture

3B commented

i write an extension of mailhandler module
and setup a version of hylafax

now i'm fixing some issue about "unknown fax numbers"

let's stay in touch

skives’s picture

skives commented

Hi there, I'm just wondering if this got any further?

Thanks,
Alex

troym559’s picture

troym559 commented

Just wanted to sound in on this. This would be a great module. I hope it can happen.

hummosa’s picture

hummosa commented

Hey guys, did this go anywhere? I'd be very interested in a fax module.

Raf’s picture

Raf commented

Following.

Druid’s picture

Druid commented

Are you looking to format a page differently for fax than for normal printing? That would be the only reason I would see to have a different "fax" setting, and could probably be done with CSS. Doesn't your PC's operating system allow you to define "fax" as one of its printers, and take care of the settings, phone numbers, etc. for you? Unless "fax" output would be a radically different layout that CSS couldn't handle, I wouldn't see any reason for a fax module. Just some thoughts before you put a lot of effort into new modules — printing to a fax system would be the normal way to go.

wesdsturdevant’s picture

wesdsturdevant commented

I need to send a fax to the restaurant from my drupal site, i would also be satisfied with joomla but would like to use drupal commerce or ideally ubercart I think. I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER. My boss is but he is too busy to be working on this project as we are the only two employees and he has another job and not the time to work on this. Before signing a contract I need to have a plan of working this out to fax the resturant so they know what kind of pizza to make and deliver or be picked up. I've heard some alternative solutions using efax or other software but would really like a module addon for ubercart or commerce that I can easily install and configure just putting in the fax number to send to the resturant. It seems a lot of people online have this same problem and have either written their own php scripts and not shared or talked clients into paying a middleman service to do it for them. Please let me know if anybody has done this and an easy and good way of doing this. I need to get back to my client to let them know some alternatives or how we plan to get around this right away so any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks ahead of time.

time4e’s picture

time4e commented

I know this post is old but I just finished making a fax capable drupal site using webforms 3 and a two simple sendmail scripts that pass the form submission to hylafax. You can check out the hylafax sendmail scripts here. Also here is an example of this setup in action http://www.edgefax.com

-Tim

blablaid.com’s picture

blablaid.com commented

waduh,,,,i dont know it,,sorry