Forums

Hi,

We made a site for a garden house manufacturer. It's online for about two weeks. We use a lot of chronoforms on this site in 4 different languages. Most of them are used to request a quotation. We now have a problem with the form to request a catalogue.The admin sometimes receives blanc mails.

Some admin mails arrive with blanc fields, and have root@localhost.be as from mail. Others arrive as they should.

Sometimes I get the emails as they should, but also a copy with blanc fields and root@localhost.be as sender.

These blanc mails show as blanc fields in the database (I use MijoSQL).

First I thought it could be language related. Cause when I tested it the results for the dutch and french mails looked good, but not for the german and english tests. Both then I tested it again and it seemed to occure random.

This is private content

Help would be appreciated,
Thanks

Hi den_dhaeze,

I don't see anything 'wrong' with the form. Perhaps something with the site setup or the SEF URLs is giving you double submissions.

I suggest that you add the Submit LImit action from the Security actions group with a setting of say 10 seconds. Drag an Event Loop or Redirect action into the pink On Fail box.

You might also add, after that some serverside validation to check a couple of the required fields and block empty submissions.

Bob

Hi Greyhead,

Why would the SEF URL's cause double submissions? You mean related to the different languages? They all have different URL's.

Could you explain what the event loop in the On Fail box does? It reloads the form when a new form is submitted in 10 seconds?

Thanks

Hi den_dhaeze,

Joomla! SEF URLs can work in mysterious ways, sometimes instead of loading the 'Thank You' message they manage to re-submit the form. I don't quite know how but it does happen.

The Submit Limit action check to see if there has been a recent submission (you set the time limit) and triggers the action if there has been one. This is useful for forms with uploads that can take a while to submit and stops resubmissions if the user clicks the Submit button more than once.

The Event Loop action load a form event when that event runs. By default that is the form On Load event - but you can set it to load any event on the same form.

Bob



PS I recommend that you do not use your email as a Username here - it is publicly visible and may be scraped and spammed.

It's strange that it resubmits the blanc form, cause it should contain required fields. I tried the submit limit (10 sec), but after that we got 2 more blanc mails, so that didn't solve it. Should it be in a specific place in the setup in the backend? I made a screenshot, is it okay like this?

I started thinking that the problem with the SEF might have to do with copies of menu-items. You can reach the different forms (contact, catalogue, appointment,..) through the main menu, that's where the original menu-items are. But I also created a Contact menu, with copies of the originals, that displays only below a certain amount of pixels, to optimize the responsive user experience. I noticed that some of them had identical aliasses as the original ones. Could this be it? See screenshot. I now unpublished this extra menu.

I really hope we can find a way to solve this, 'cause these forms are the core of the site..

and thx, I changed my username.

thanks for the help

+ I noticed something else: in the HTML (render form) action, the relative URL was set to "yes". While in the other forms, where I don't have problems (they are used less), it was set to "No".

What does this "Relative URL" setting actually do? The url after submitting is identical as to when it was set to "yes".

Hi den_dhaeze,

The Submit LImit action should be the first one in the On Submit action - otherwise the DB Save will be run before that check is made.

Up to you to sort out the menu aliases - I don’t know enough to help there.

The Relative URL setting changes the form Action URL check the <form> tag in the page HTML to see it. By default it picks up the page URL and adds &event=submit to the end. That is OK if the Joomla! URL parser recognises that the rest of the URL is from ChronoForms - often it doesn't. If you turn Relative URL off then ChronoForms uses the full CF url . . . ?option=com_chronoforms . . . Unfortunately in recent versions of Joomla! the SEF URL processor will pick this up and change it to an SEF URL which may then still not work.

In my experience the best solution - which is in the FAQ you linked to - is to create hidden menu items and add those directly to the form Action URL.

Bob

Hi,

We're still getting blanc mails. We've tried your suggestions but I don't understand your suggestion about adding hidden menu items directly to the action URL: this causes the form not being added to the databases, and admin/user don't receive emails either?

Another question: Is it possible, when creating a table, to add a field that shows the IP address? So i can check in MijoSQL where the blanc mails came from.

thanks,

Michiel

Hi Michiel,

Please see the last section in this FAQ for using Hidden Menu items. They work very well - the Menu item has to be of Type ChronoForms and include the Form name and the On Submit event as it says in the FAQ.

Yes, you can add the IP address to the form data using a Custom Code action to capture the address. Here's the code used in the Email action:

<?php
$form->data['ip_address'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
?>

Bob

Hi,

I added the menu alias (kijkboek-submit) of the hidden menu item (as described in FAQ) to the action url field.
The form is located here:

http://tuinhuizenfabrikant.be/nl/contact/kijkboek-aanvragen

When I click submit, it now goes to this link:

http://tuinhuizenfabrikant.be/nl/contact/kijkboek-submit

--> It just shows another form on the site, the kijkboek form isn't really submitted.


About the IP address: where should I add this piece of code?

thanks,

Michiel

Hi Michiel,

The action URL of the kijkboek form appears to be set to /nl/contact/kijkboek-aanvragen?chronoform=Kijkboek&event=submit

That is not the hidden menu link. I suspect that the SEF URL is redirecting based on the 'contact' in the URL.

What exactly do you have in the Action URL box of the HTML (render form) action? And what are the settings on the Menu Options tab?

Bob

Hi,

I putted the settings back to how they were before I tested it with the hidden menu item, that's what you saw. Because it didn't seem to work + the site is live and has a lot of visitors.

can you give me more details about adding the IP address to the table? Where should i put this piece of code?

thanks

Hi den_dhaeze,

You would add the IP address code to a Custom Code action before the DB Save action - and you'd need to add the column to the table as well. If you edit the table, please then click the Delete Cache icon in the Forms Manager to update the CF table records.

Bob

Hi Greyhead,

We finally found what caused our problem! When you fill in a form and click submit you get a thank you message (in dutch):

[IMG]http://i64.tinypic.com/2nlzdx2.png[/IMG]

When being on this page I select another language, for example german. Then I get this message:

[IMG]http://i68.tinypic.com/1z6rrex.png[/IMG]

It re-submits the form, but this time its empty and in another language. This is how the blanc mails are sent to the admin with sender: root user.

Do you now how this could be avoided?

thanks

Hi den_dhaeze,

Either:

a. Redirect to a separate article page for the Thank you page; or

b. Add Serverside validation to stop empty submissions

Bob