Send html forms to email with ease. It's convenient for static sites without any backend.

Usage

HTML form:

<form action="http://localhost:5000/send" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="name">
    <input type="email" name="_replyto" required>
    <input type="hidden" name="_sendto" value="ex1@example.com">
    <input type="submit" value="Send">
</form>

Ajax request:

<script src="https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"></script>
<script>
    $(function() {
        $.ajax({
            url: "http://localhost:5000/send",
            method: "POST",
            data: {name: "John", _sendto: "ex1@example.com"},
            success: function(result) {
                alert(result);
            }
        });
    })
</script>

Advanced features:

Form inputs can have specially named name-attributes, which alter functionality. They are all prefixed with an underscore.

_sendto

Email address where to send the submission. Must be in ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS.

_replyto

This value is used for the email's Reply-To field. This way you can directly "Reply" to the email to respond to the person who originally submitted the form.

_next

By default, after submitting a form the user is redirected to the original page (referer). If referer header is not provided (some browsers doesn't send it) a simple page with text Form has been successfully sent. is show. With _next you can provide an alternative redirect URL.

_subject

This value is used for the email's subject, so that you can quickly reply to submissions without having to edit the subject line each time.

_cc

This value is used for the email's CC Field. This lets you send a copy of each submission to another email address. If you want to cc multiple emails, simply make the cc field a list of emails each separated by a comma.

_gotcha

Add this "honeypot" field to avoid spam by fooling scrapers. If a value is provided, the submission will be silently ignored. The input should be hidden with CSS.

Deploying

With docker:

$ docker run \
  -e ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS=ex1@example.com,ex2@example.com \
  -e MAIL_SENDER=ex3@example.com \
  -e MAIL_SERVER=localhost \
  -e MAIL_PORT=465 \
  -e MAIL_USERNAME=user \
  -e MAIL_PASSWORD=password \
  -e MAIL_USE_TLS=0 \
  -e MAIL_USE_SSL=0 \
  -p 5000:8000 \
  chibisov/formsend:0.0.1

By default starts only 1 worker. It could be changed with env variable WEB_CONCURRENCY:

$ docker run \
  ...
  -e WEB_CONCURRENCY=3 \
  ...
  -p 5000:8000 \
  chibisov/formsend:0.0.1

Environment variables:

• ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS - allowed email recipients. Required.
• MAIL_SERVER - SMTP server. Required.
• MAIL_PORT - SMTP port. Default is 25.
• MAIL_USE_TLS - SMTP TLS. Required.
• MAIL_USE_SSL - SMTP SSL. Required.
• MAIL_USERNAME - SMTP username.
• MAIL_PASSWORD - SMTP password.
• MAIL_SENDER - email address of the sender. Required.
• MAIL_MAX_EMAILS - limit on the number of emails sent in a single connection before reconnecting.

Development

Running development server:

$ FLASK_ENV=development \
  ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS=ex1@example.com,ex2@example.com \
  MAIL_SENDER=ex3@example.com \
  MAIL_SERVER=localhost \
  MAIL_USERNAME=user \
  MAIL_PASSWORD=password \
  MAIL_USE_TLS=0 \
  MAIL_USE_SSL=0 \
  tox -e flask -- run

For pdb working don't set the env variable FLASK_ENV=development.

Running tests:

$ tox -e test

Checking code style:

$ tox -e yapf -- formsend tests -r --diff

Fixing code style:

$ tox -e yapf -- formsend tests -r -i

Checking types:

$ tox -e mypy -- formsend

Docker images:

Build:

$ docker build -t chibisov/formsend:0.0.1 .

Push:

$ docker push chibisov/formsend:0.0.1

TODO:

• Mail send retry (smtp errors)
• Mail send timeout
• Test ajax handler with CORS (liveserver?)

Credits

formsend is the lightweight and stateless alternative to formspree.