ℹ️ This project is hosted on our self-hosted server, with mirrors on CodeBerg and GitHub. For the most complete and up-to-date version of the project, and for contributions, please use the primary repository at: https://code.apps.glenux.net/glenux/maily-form.

Maily Form

This is a self-hosted service you can use to place forms on static sites. It uses nodemailer and you can host it with Docker.

Server parameters

To run the server, you must set a few environment variables from the list below.

Parameters that control email delivery

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`SMTP_USER`	required	-	The SMTP user
`SMTP_PASS`	required	-	The SMTP password
`SMTP_HOST`	required	-	The SMTP host
`SMTP_PORT`	required	-	The SMTP port
`SMTP_SSL`	optional	`false`	If the SMTP server uses encryption
`SMTP_AUTH`	optional	`false`	If the SMTP server uses authentication

Parameters that control email headers

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`EMAIL_FROM`	required	-	The sender (ex: `Forms forms@example.com`)
`EMAIL_TO`	required	-	Default recipient

Parameters that control the service

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`PORT`	optional	`8080`	The port on which the server should listen
`HOST`	optional	`"127.0.0.1"`	The host on which the server should listen
`ALLOWED_TO`	optional	the value of `EMAIL_TO`	All allowed recipients
`CORS_HEADER`	optional	`"*"`	The Access-Control-Allow-Origin CORS header

Parameters that control the admin panel

If you want to use the admin panel at /admin, you have to set this too:

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`ADMIN_USER`	optional	-	Admin username
`ADMIN_PASS`	optional	-	Admin password
`ADMIN_REALM`	optional	`"Maily-Form Administration"`	Admin realm

Other parameters

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`DATABASE_PATH`	optional	/data/submissions.db	The path where the sqlite3 database will be located

Special form fields

Name	Type	Default value	Usage
`_to`	optional	-	Recipient, if `ALLOWED_TO` is set, it must be in that list, hidden
`_replyTo`	optional	-	Email address which should be configured as replyTo, (most probably not hidden)
`_redirectTo`	optional	-	URL to redirect to, hidden
`_formName`	optional	-	Name of the form, hidden
`_t_email`	optional	-	"Honeypot" field, not hidden, advised (see notice below)

You can find a sample in the form.html file.

Notice to the honeypot field: Maily Form offers the option to use a Honeypot field, which is basically another input, but it's hidden to the user with either a CSS rule or some JavaScript. It is very likely, that your public form will get the attention of some bots some day and then the spam starts. But bots try to fill every possible input field and will also fill the honeypot field. But Maily Form is really clever and refuses to send mails where the honeypot field is filled. So you should definitely use it.

Installation

You can simply start a Docker container with the parameters listed above. You can also use docker-compose.

Sample docker-compose.yml file for Maily Form:

---
services:
  forms:
    image: glenux/maily-form
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - forms_data:/data
    environment:
      DATABASE_PATH: /data/submissions.db
      SMTP_USER: mail@example.com
      SMTP_PASS: yourSUPERsecretPASSWORD123
      SMTP_HOST: smtp.your-mail-provider.com
      SMTP_PORT: 587
      SMTP_SSL: true
      SMTP_AUTH: true
      EMAIL_TO: mail@example.com
      EMAIL_FROM: "Forms forms@example.com"
      ALLOWED_TO: "mail1@example.com,mail2@example.com"
      CORS_HEADER: "example.com"

volumes:
  forms_data:

Then run docker compose up.

Contributors

jlelse created the project mainly for his own purposes. Original author.
glenux made it ready for production at boldcode.io. Current maintainer.

Licence

This project is under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENCE version 3.