For small web sites built in HTML, a contact form is often the only thing on the site that requires use of a server-side language such as PHP. Adding a framework such as Laravel is overkill, but without one the developer is often left with no choice but to write a standalone script to handle form submissions. This is not a terribly difficult thing to do in PHP, but it's hella tedious, as is the process of writing the markup to output the form itself.
Quickform is designed to minimize the time and effort it takes to get a new contact form up and running on a simple HTML site hosted on a PHP server. Form attributes and fields are defined in a config array, and submissions are sent via email using PHPMailer.
Quickform does not currently perform validation of the values passed to it in the form fields. It merely checks whether required fields have been filled out. This is sufficient for most small web sites.
- PHP 7+ web server (may work in earlier versions but is untested)
- Composer
- An SMTP mail server, or a web server able to send using PHP's mail() function
Install the package using composer, by typing:
composer require axis80/quickform
This will in turn install PHPMailer as a dependency.
Create an HTML page for your contact form. It must be saved with a .php extension, or you must enable PHP parsing for .html files.
At the top of the file, you have to include the /vendor/autoload.php file
that was created by Composer. You also need to define your form, instantiate
the class, and call the handler that processes form POST submissions. Here's
everything that goes at the top of your file:
<?php
use QuickForm\QuickForm;
/* Path to composer autoload.php. You may need to adjust this path */
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');
/* Your form configuration */
$qfConfig = [
'to' => [
'sales@example.com',
'info@example.com'
],
'from' => 'website@example.com',
'replyto' => 'bill@example.com', // optional
'replytoField' => 'email', // optional - gets the reply-to address from a formfield (which you should set as required). overrides the 'replyto' setting
'subject' => 'Web Site Form Submission',
'successURL' => 'https://example.com/formsuccess.html',
'form' => [
'formClass' => 'your-form-class', // optional
'buttonClass' => 'your-button-class' // optional
],
// PHPMailer settings - see their docs for details
'phpMailer' => [
'smtpDebug' => 0,
'isSmtp' => true,
'host' => 'smtp.example.com',
'smtpAuth' => true,
'username' => 'smtpuser@example.com',
'password' => '<SMTP User Password Goes Here>',
'smtpSecure' => 'tls',
'port' => 587
],
// ReCAPTCHA v2 settings
'reCaptchaV2' => [
'enabled' => true,
'siteKey' => '',
'secretKey' => '',
'wrapperClass' => ''
],
// Field definitions
'fields' => [
'name' => [
'type' => 'text',
'required' => true,
'inputClass' => 'form-control', // optional
'label' => 'Your Name',
'labelClass' => 'control-label', // optional
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group' // optional
],
'email' => [
'type' => 'email',
'required' => true,
'inputClass' => 'form-control',
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group',
'label' => 'Your Email Address',
'labelClass' => 'control-label',
'helpText' => 'Enter your email address',
'helpClass' => 'form-text text-muted'
],
'phone' => [
'isHoneypot' => true,
'type' => 'phone',
'required' => true,
'inputClass' => 'form-control',
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group d-none',
'label' => 'Your Phone',
'labelClass' => 'control-label',
'helpText' => 'Enter your phone number',
'helpClass' => 'form-text text-muted'
],
'pizza' => [
'type' => 'radio',
'required' => true,
'options' => ['Yes', 'No'],
'inputClass' => 'form-control',
'label' => 'Do you like pizza?',
'labelClass' => 'control-label',
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group'
],
'toppings' => [
'type' => 'checkbox',
'required' => true,
'options' => ['Pepperoni','Mushrooms','Onions','Anchovies'],
'inputClass' => 'form-check-input',
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group',
'label' => 'Which toppings do you like?',
'labelClass' => 'control-label',
'itemLabelClass' => 'form-check-label'
],
'comments' => [
'type' => 'textarea',
'required' => true,
'inputClass' => 'form-control',
'wrapperClass' => 'form-group',
'label' => 'Your Comments',
'labelClass' => 'control-label'
]
]
];
/* Instantiate the class using the above configuration */
$qf = new Quickform($qfConfig);
/* Call the handler that intercepts and processes form POST submissions */
$qf->formPostHandler();
?>
Further on down your page, add the following code wherever you want your form to appear:
<?php $qf->renderForm(); ?>
QuickForm renders the entire form for you, including a submit button at the bottom.
A complete HTML contact page can be found in tests/SimpleContactForm.php, You can use this as a starting point for building your own contact form.
That's pretty much it. If your SMTP settings are correct, you should receive a notification email at the address(es) you specified every time the form is submitted.
When an end user submits the form, a notification email is sent using the "to"
and "from" email addresses specified in your QuickForm configuration. Normally,
if the recipient of that email chooses to reply, the reply email address will be
routed to the sender of the notification email. This is not always desirable,
as web site administrators and customer service staff will often blindly hit
"reply" and send responses back to the wrong address. It is possible to override
this behavior by setting the replytoField config parameter to the name of a
form field. This will cause the reply-to header to be populated using the value
entered into that field by the end user, so any replies will be routed to the
person who submitted the form.
Any field can optionally be marked as a "honeypot" by setting isHoneypot to true. In addition to setting that flag, you should also assign it a CSS class that hides it from view. Bots will often fill out the field, but a valid user cannot, so if a value is received in that field the submission will be treated as spam and discarded. In the example configuration above, the "phone" field is set as a honeypot, and the "d-none" class is used to hide it.
To enable ReCAPTCHA v2 ("I'm not a robot" checkbox) on the forms, retrieve a
keypair from https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin and enter them into your
configuration. You must also add this code snippet to the <head> section of
your page:
<script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js" async defer></script>
I'll do my best to keep up with issue reports that relate to bugs and/or enhancements, as well as with any pull requests that come in. For anything else you should probably have low expectations of receiving a response. I simply do not have the time to answer questions about basic PHP scripting, working with different web hosts, etc. Sorry :-(
Pull requests are welcome, particularly those which improve the documentation and examples.