SimpleForms

A basic contact form project that can be added to any site without requiring any back end development at all. This repo is a temporary location for the project until the full project is ready to be released, at which point it will be made a public repo.

PLEASE NOTE : Simple Forms is not yet released fully!

The source needs to still be cleaned up, and have my keys removed, but it will be and released soon! The Timeline for this is during March 2023

Demo Site

This demo site shows how to use the SimpleForms package and how to publish that website to a server. This repo will aim to :

• Explain what the SimpleForms package is
• Use the SimpleForms package to create a contact form on the website
• Demonstrate hosting an Umbraco website on Azure
• Demonstrate using Github Actions to build and deploy the website on Azure

Getting Started

To create this website I ran the following commands. Note : as this is a live site, I've removed the password from the command line.

# Ensure we have the latest Umbraco templates
dotnet new -i Umbraco.Templates::10.4.0

# Create solution/project
dotnet new sln --name "SimpleForms"
dotnet new umbraco --force -n "SimpleForms.Web" --friendly-name "Administrator" --email "[email protected]" --password "XXXXXX" --development-database-type SQLite
dotnet sln add "SimpleForms.Web"

# Add SimpleForms and uSync packages. uSync is used to help with deployment of this site, but is not required.
dotnet add "SimpleForms.Web" package Umbraco.Community.SimpleForms
dotnet add "SimpleForms.Web" package uSync --version 10.3.2

dotnet run --project "SimpleForms.Web"
#Running

This will get you a basic Umbraco website with the SimpleForms package installed. I have also made some changes to the appSettings.json file to configure Modelsbuilder how I prefer to normally set it up.

Adding a basic contact form

Add the following sippet into your page if you want to use standard contact form built into the package. This is distributed as a partial view, so you won't be able to edit it directly, but you can still style the form using CSS.

# Add this using statement to the top of your page
@using Umbraco.Community.SimpleForms.Models;


# Add this to the body of your page where you want to render the form    
<section class="section section">
    @{
        await Html.RenderPartialAsync("SimpleFormsContact", new SimpleContactFormViewModel());
    }
</section>

Adding a custom contact form

You can also create your own partial view to create a custom contact form layout, and using the SimpleContactFormViewModel to render the form. This is useful if you want to change the layout of the form.

Please Note : you won't be able to add additional fields to this form yet.

Create the custom Partial

Create a new partial view in the Views folder of your site. I called mine "CustomContactForm.cshtml". Add the following code to the partial view. You can customise this layout as you wish.

@using Umbraco.Community.SimpleForms.SurfaceControllers
@using Umbraco.Extensions
@model Umbraco.Community.SimpleForms.Models.SimpleContactFormViewModel

@using (Html.BeginUmbracoForm<SimpleFormsSurfaceController>(nameof(SimpleFormsSurfaceController.Submit)))
{
    <div>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name, new { @class = "form-control", placeholder = Html.DisplayNameFor(m => m.Name) })
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Name)
    </div>
    <div>
        @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Email, new { @class = "form-control", placeholder = Html.DisplayNameFor(m => m.Email) })
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Email)
    </div>
    <div>
        @Html.TextAreaFor(m => m.Message, new { @class = "form-control", placeholder = Html.DisplayNameFor(m => m.Message) })
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Message)
    </div>
    <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" />
}

Using the new Custom Form Partial

# Add this using statement to the top of your page
@using Umbraco.Community.SimpleForms.Models;


# Add this to the body of your page where you want to render the form    
<section class="section section">
    @{
        await Html.RenderPartialAsync("SimpleFormsContact", new SimpleContactFormViewModel());
    }
</section>

Using a Tag Helper

There is also a taghelper in development, which will allow you to render the form with a single line. This will be made available soon.