FormMailer is a simple way to receive emails from contact forms on your static website.
It runs as a service and emails contents of the forms posted to it.
Suppose you have this HTML in your static page:
<html>
<body>
<form action="http://myformmailer.mydomain.com/submit" method="post">
<div>
<label for="msg">Message:</label>
<textarea id="msg" name="User Message"></textarea>
</div>
<div class="button">
<button type="submit">Send your message</button>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>FormMailer service deployed on your domain http://myformmailer.mydomain.com/ will receive user-submitted POST requests and send emails similar to this one:
> Content-Type: text/plain
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Form submitted on http://mydomain.com/index.html
> Message-ID:
> <[email protected]>
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 13:29:25 +0000
> MIME-Version: 1.0
>
> Submitted user form was received by FormMailer server, see details below.
>
> Referrer page: http://mydomain.com/index.html
>
> User Message:
> Hello world!
>
> Submitter IP address: 1.2.3.4
FormMailer also:
- supports HTTPS.
- supports plain text and HTML emails.
- uses Mustache.JS templates for email body and subject.
- saves all received data (and sent emails) to the local SQLite database.
- understands reCAPTCHA.
- supports
application/jsonandapplication/x-www-form-urlencodedcontent types.
-
Install Node.js (version 8 or higher).
-
Install FormMailer with the command:
npm install -g formmailer
-
Create a new
config.jsonfile and place following defaults inside:{ "recipientEmails" : "[email protected]", "fromEmail": "formmailer@localhost", }Edit settings specific for your environment (see Configuration options).
-
Start FormMailer:
formmailer
You can specify
config.jsonfile location with-ccommand line argument:formmailer -c /path/to/my/config.json.
Now, change the action field in your HTML form(s) to something like this:
<form method="post" action="http://[domain or ip]:[port]/submit"> ...Here [domain or ip] should be your FormMailer server domain (or IP address), and [port] should be the port which your FormMailer instance listens to (httpListenPort config setting).
Default configuration file location is ./config.json. You can provide different location with -c command line argument.
| Option | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
recipientEmails |
E-mail recipient address. String or array of strings (for multiple recepients). | Required field. |
fromEmail |
E-mail address that will be provided in From: email header. |
"formmailer@localhost" |
smtpOptions |
Nodemailer options object. | {host: "localhost", port: 25, tls: { rejectUnauthorized: false }} |
enableHtmlEmail |
Enables sending out HTML versions of emails. | true |
enableHttp |
Determines if HTTP should be enabled | true |
httpListenIP |
IP address to listen HTTP requests from. | "0.0.0.0" (all IP addresses) |
httpListenPort |
Port to listen HTTP requests from. | 80 |
enableHttps |
Determines if HTTPS should be enabled | true |
httpsListenIP |
IP address to listen HTTPS requests from. | "0.0.0.0" (all IP addresses) |
httpsListenPort |
Port to listen HTTPS requests from. | 443 |
httpsPrivateKeyPath |
Path to HTTPS private key. Specify to enable HTTPS. | "" |
httpsCertificatePath |
Path to HTTPS certificate. Specify to enable HTTPS. | "" |
enableRecaptcha |
If false, receiver handler should not check g-recaptcha-response field even if site key is provided. |
false |
reCaptchaSecret |
Site secret reCAPTCHA key. No captcha checks will be performed if this value is not set. | "" |
reCaptchaSiteKey |
Public reCaptcha site key. | "" |
formTargets |
See details in Sending different forms to different recipients | { } |
redirectFieldName |
Name of the HTML input that contains redirect URL address. | "_redirect" |
subject |
Email subject field content. Special entry {{{referrerUrl}}} will be changed to the address of the webpage from where the form is submitted. |
"Form submitted on {{{referrerUrl}}}" |
logLevel |
How detailed logging should be (error, warn, info, verbose, debug, silly). |
"info" |
enableWebInterface |
Enables separate HTTP server that provides the UI for viewing sent email history. | true |
webInterfaceIP |
Sent email history HTTP server IP address binding. | "0.0.0.0" (all IP addresses) |
webInterfacePort |
Sent email history HTTP server port. | 3002 |
assetsFolder |
Path to the folder containing static assets. | "./assets" |
databaseFileName |
Path to the SQLite database file. | "./formmailer.db" |
maxHttpRequestSize |
Maximum allowed size of HTTP requests, in bytes. | 1000000 |
HTML fields with names that start with the underscore character are ignored by FormMailer:
<input type="text" name="_thisIsIgnored" value="stuff that doesn't have to be sent in email">Also, there are some special fields that can be provided in hidden inputs:
| Input name | Meaning |
|---|---|
_redirect |
URL where to redirect user after the form is successfuly submitted. If _redirect field is omitted, user will be redirected to the default thanks.html page hosted by FormMailer. |
_formurl |
Value will replace referrer in emails. |
_formname |
Value will show up in email header. Should help to identify which form was submitted if there are several on the page. |
To enable reCAPTCHA checking:
-
Sign up for reCAPTCHA (https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin), get public site key and secret key.
-
Provide public site key value into
reCaptchaSiteKeyoption in your config file. -
Provide secret key value into
reCaptchaSecretoption in your config file.
There is no need to make any modifications in your site form, reCAPTCHA will be checked on the intermediate page generated by FormMailer.
To disable reCAPTCHA checking, set enableRecaptcha to false.
If no reCaptchaSiteKey is provided in config, you have to integrate reCAPCHA on your site manually, see below.
If you are processing reCAPTCHA manually on your site, you need to provide to FormMailer g-recaptcha-response field in your POST request (either x-www-form-urlencoded or json).
Refer to the link below for reCAPTCHA documentation:
https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/display
First, add a dictionary similar to the one below to the configuration file:
"formTargets": {
"contact": "[email protected]",
"support": ["[email protected]", "[email protected]"],
"sales": {
"recipient": "[email protected]",
"subject": "Purchase inquiry submitted"
}
}After that, provide form's action URL in the following format
http://formmailer.domain.com/submit/<formtarget> where <formtarget> is a key in this dictionary.
<form method="POST" action="http://formmailer.domain.com/submit/sales">...FormMailer will use a corresponding recipient (and optionally a subject) instead of the default one.
Acquire SSL certificate (either buy from one of the authorities or get one for free). You should have two files (usually .pem and .crt). Put them in some directory.
In the configuration file add private key (.pem) path into httpsPrivateKeyPath and certificate (.crt) path into httpsCertificatePath. For example:
{
...
"httpsPrivateKeyPath": "./mycert/mydomain.pem",
"httpsCertificatePath": "./mycert/mydomain.crt"
}Restart FormMailer and it should automatically run HTTPS server (on port 443), along with HTTP. If you wish to disable HTTP, change enableHttp config setting to false.
FormMailer accepts JSON requests, distingushing them by content-type: application/json HTTP header. FormMailer expects JSON to contain an object. Properties of this object along with their values will be listed in the email. Other behaviour is similar to requests with content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded, i. e. special fields with names starting with _ will be ignored and g-recaptcha-response field will be used for reCAPTCHA authentication.
If email was sent successfully, JSON response { result: "ok" } will be returned. Or { result: "error", description: "error details description" }, in case of an error.
FormMailer is using Mustache.JS templates for email body and subject. Email can be sent both as plain text and as HTML. Sending out HTML emails can be turned off by setting enableHtmlEmail to false in the config.
Path to plain text email template is ./assets/plain-text-email-template.mst.
Path to HTML template is ./assets/html-email-template.html.
Subject text template can be changed in the subject configuration setting.
All templates may include following variables:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
formName |
Name of the form (provided by _formname special form field). |
incomingIp |
Sender IP address. |
mustacheTemplateData |
User-submitted data (key: key, value: textValue). |
refererUrl |
Referer URL (from HTTP request headers). |
By default, you can access sent emails history table by the address: http://localhost:3002/view. You can disable this by changing enableWebInterface setting to false.
NOTE: As there is currently no authentication in the Formmailer web-interface, it is recommended to make webInterfacePort (3002 by default) accessible only from local intranet. Or restrict the IP network for web-interface HTTP server by setting webInterfaceIP config to something different from 0.0.0.0.
Example for Ubuntu 17.04
Create a new file /lib/systemd/system/formmailer.service and place the following contents inside:
[Unit]
Description=FormMailer Service
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=formmailer
Group=formmailer
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node ./dist/src/index.js -c ./config.json
Restart=on-failure
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
WorkingDirectory=/var/formmailer
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targetChange WorkingDirectory to the directory where you have cloned FormMailer.
Supposing you have cloned the FormMailer repository to /var/formmailer, run:
$ # create user and group
$ sudo groupadd formmailer && sudo useradd formmailer -g formmailer
$ # go to the formmailer repo directory
$ cd /var/formmailer
$ # change the owner of the formmailer directory to the formmailer user
$ sudo chown formmailer:formmailer . -R
$ # force systemd to load the new service file
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ # start the service
$ sudo systemctl start formmailerDon't forget to check your firewall settings to allow outside TCP connections to the port specified in httpListenPort setting.
NOTE: FormMailer uses default NodeJS HTTP server. For production environment it is recommended to set up a reverse proxy (Nginx or alternative) that will hide the FormMailer service from the outside world.