VForm Documentation

What is VForm?

VForm is an HTML form feedback handler.

HTML lets you setup pages with input fields, allowing users to supply information to you -- these are known as web forms. However, HTML by itself does nothing with that information; some sort of helper program (also known as a CGI program) is required on the server to actually do something with the submitted information.

VForm is such a program. It takes the user-submitted information, and e-mails it to one or more e-mail addresses that you provide. Optionally, you can setup a 'response page' which is displayed after the information is submitted, to say 'Thank-you for the information' or whatever you like.

VForm's Features

As a general-purpose HTML form feedback handler, VForm has many configuration options:

  • VForm can mail the supplied form information to one or more e-mail addresses. At least one address is required (otherwise, VForm wouldn't be doing anything useful).

  • VForm will generate an easy-to-read e-mail message containing the form information. Click here to see an example of what VForm would e-mail to you from your web form.

  • If there are any fields on your form that you need to receive in order to do something meaningful, you can define those fields as being 'required', and VForm will remind the user of blank fields until they have been filled out.

  • If you are accepting credit card payments via your web form, VForm can check the structure of supplied credit card numbers to see whether they are random strings of numbers or not. VForm understands Visa, MasterCard and American Express numbers, but it does not check with a bank for available funds.

  • After the form information has been submitted, VForm can display a list of the information provided, or you can have it display an optional, customized 'response' page. You can even have VForm redirect the user to any valid URL if you wish.

  • If you create an optional reponse page, you can include the contents of form variables in the page using HTML comments like <!variablename>. Provided the variable name appears identically in the form and in the response page (the names are case sensitive), whatever the user enters in the form will appear in the response page.

Activating VForm

Here is an example FORM tag demonstrating how to activate VForm for your web form:

<form method=post action="/cgi-bin/vform">
If you have designed a customized response page, you can activate VForm like this:

<form method=post
action="/cgi-bin/vform?/~username/response.html">
Please note the '?' in the action string. Everything following the question mark is part of the URL for your response page, relative to the web server's document root. For example, if your web site's URL is "http://www.coastnet.com/~username/" and your response page is called "response.html", then the action string above is correct.

As another example, if your response page is called 'thanks.html', and it is located in a directory called 'responses', the action string would be:

action="/cgi-bin/vform?/~username/responses/thanks.html">
A basic setup of VForm would look like this, with a redirect to a page called 'thanks.html':
<form method=post action="/cgi-bin/vform">
<input type=hidden name="mailto" value="user@coastnet.com">
<input type=hidden name="redirect" value="http://www.coastnet.com/~user/thanks.html">

<!-- Form elements here -->
Please enter your name <input name="name" size=35>

<input type=submit value="Submit name">
</form>

How you choose to configure VForm is up to you and what you'd like it to do. Click here to try out an example form.

Configuring VForm

There are two ways to configure VForm's operation, and both methods can be combined if necessary:

  1. VForm understands special field names within the form itself.
    The advantage of this method is that all of the configuration can be included along with the form, so that there is only one file to edit.

    Click here to see the special field names and examples of their use.

  2. If you have a customized response page, VForm understands special HTML comments within that page.
    The advantage of this method is that your destination e-mail address can be hidden from users (valuable if you only want form responses going to those addresses), and users do not need to reload the form page whenever you make changes.

    Click here to see the special HTML comments and examples of their use.
 
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