I want to make a contact us form in Rails 3 with the following fields:
- Name
- Email
- Message title
- Message body
The posted messages are intended to go to my email address so I don't neccessarily must store the messages in the database. Do I have to use ActionMailer
, any gem or plugin for it?
This tutorial is an excellent example - and it's Rails 3
Update:
This article is a better example than the one I posted earlier, works flawlessly
Second Update:
I would also recommend merging-in some of the techniques outlined in this railscast on the active_attr gem, where Ryan Bates walks you through the process of setting up a tabless model for a contact page.
Third Update:
I wrote my own test-driven blog post about it
I updated the implementation to be as close as possible to the REST specification.
Basic setup
You can use the mail_form gem. After installing simply create a model named Message
similar as it is described in the documentation.
# app/models/message.rb
class Message < MailForm::Base
attribute :name, :validate => true
attribute :email, :validate => /\A([\w\.%\+\-]+)@([\w\-]+\.)+([\w]{2,})\z/i
attribute :message_title, :validate => true
attribute :message_body, :validate => true
def headers
{
:subject => "A message",
:to => "contact@domain.com",
:from => %("#{name}" <#{email}>)
}
end
end
This will already allow you to test sending emails via the console.
Contact page
In order to create a separate contact page do the following.
# app/controllers/messages_controller.rb
class MessagesController < ApplicationController
respond_to :html
def index
end
def create
message = Message.new(params[:contact_form])
if message.deliver
redirect_to root_path, :notice => 'Email has been sent.'
else
redirect_to root_path, :notice => 'Email could not be sent.'
end
end
end
Setup the routing ..
# config/routes.rb
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do
# Other resources
resources :messages, only: [:index, :create]
match "contact" => "messages#index"
end
Prepare a form partial ..
// app/views/pages/_form.html.haml
= simple_form_for :contact_form, url: messages_path, method: :post do |f|
= f.error_notification
.form-inputs
= f.input :name
= f.input :email, label: 'Email address'
= f.input :message_title, label: 'Title'
= f.input :message_body, label: 'Your message', as: :text
.form-actions
= f.submit 'Submit'
And render the form in a view ..
// app/views/messages/index.html.haml
#contactform.row
= render 'form'
I couldn't make the code of this example work and I think it makes things a bit complex since your creating a model.
Anywat, I made a working contact form and blogged about it.. the text is in portuguese but the code itself is (mostly) in english http://www.rodrigoalvesvieira.com/formulario-contato-rails/
Note: I used sendmail, not SMTP.
You can use Contact Us gem via this link: https://github.com/JDutil/contact_us
The documentation is clear and you can use it simply.
Features:
- Validation
- Easy/Add remove fields
- Simple configuration