iPhone® Application Development All-In-One For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Incorporating E-Mail: Postcards from the Road

In This Chapter

• Using Mail on the iPhone

• How the Mail interface works

• Using Mail to create and send an e-mail message with attachments

One of the great features of the handy RoadTrip app is the ability to add places you'd like to stay to the app. That's all fine and dandy, but now it's time to think about being able to tell everyone what a great time you're having while staying at all these places. It's not that I'm into Schadenfreude — but sometimes it's fun to let all your hardworking friends back home know what a great time you are having on your road trip.

One of the best ways to do that is through e-mail. Although you could take care of that by using the built-in Mail app on the iPhone, being able to do it within the app is more convenient and easier for the user, especially when adding context-specific content. In this chapter, I show you how to create a postcard-like e-mail — a Road Card — from directly within the RoadTrip app.

Mail on the iPhone

The standard way to interface the Message UI — and therefore use the built-in Mail app to allow a user to create, and then send, an e-mail — is to haul out the Ol' Reliable: MFMailComposeViewController.

The MFMailComposeViewController class provides a standard interface that manages the editing and sending of an e-mail. You'll use this view controller to display the standard E-mail view inside your application. You can also fill in the fields with initial values for the subject, e-mail ...