Django: how to redirect to mailto

Question

I have a Django admin action called "Email selected members". Check some members and click the Go button and the user's mail program is opened. The emails of the selected members have been pre-entered.

This works by a Django HttpResponseRedirect(uri) with the uri being "mailto:email1,email2.. where the addresses email1, email2 ... were looked up on the server.

The only problem is that that the browser re-directs to a blank page as well a opening the client mail program.

Is there any way to avoid this?

-- Peter

Answer 1

Don't use HttpResponseRedirect. Just make the mailto: line a link. <a href="mailto:email1...">Email selected members</a>

Answer 2

I don't think it is possible. RFC 2616 says re 302 redirect:

The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s)

So the blank page that I see is the (very) short hypertext note. The browser gets the redirect instruction, pops up a temporary page with the redirect message, then retrieves the redirected URL. But with a mailto: URL the temporary page obviously remains.