Show HN: Fireform – Hook your website form into a hosted private back end
fireform.orgJust in case it might be helpful for someone else (I know it's been helpful for us at the college the past few years).
Here's a great Wufoo-like self-hosted Forms Application (version 4.0 sounds like it's right around the corner too): http://www.appnitro.com/
The software is called MachForms (I don't remember how I found it, but I'm definitely glad I did). I was able to add in LDAP authentication on my own with some customization of the core code (I wish it would be built-in as a feature, but aside from that it works really nicely out of the box).
We have a simple version of JotForm in the same space. You can install it on any LAMP server: http://www.interlogy.com/products/jotform/
It does support LDAP as well.
Anyone have the link to the other online form api/processor that was posted the other day?
it was like POST someSite.com/your@email.com
Just wanted to compare a few of them
Also posted about it in the other thread, but in case you missed it. At https://www.bitballoon.com we do a slightly different take on it since we integrate form handling with hosting and CDN configuration for your static site.
All these static form hosting tools make me think maybe one of our side projects had some possible legs: http://formend.com/
It's a backend for form data. The idea being you never set up a schema or layout ahead of time, you just send named fields and file uploads and it just works.
The implementation is a bit buggy though, it was more of a proof of concept.
In an ideal world the "name" of you form should be the key and the "type" should be the schema. This is perfect when you want you need the bread and butter of a website form: an email response and a spreadsheet of the contacts.
I love the concept, but I'd much prefer to self-host such a tool.
I'd pay for something that easily handle all the ad-hoc forms we want to cook up on our otherwise static marketing site.
Funny, I've been working on a tool that is exactly that. Sounds like it might be worth uploading to Github?
What I want/need is a more robust system to handle spam/server side validation. i.e. filtering out known bad email addresses or domains, blocking IPs, blocking known spam phrases from text fields, validating selected dates between ranges etc. Any plans for things like that? Also what about email alerts for submissions etc?
Ahh.. this takes me back to when you had your page on something like Angelfire or Geocities and someone else would provide free guestbook or "contact us" type forms. You just had to plunk some code into your html and go.
This is the Web 2.0 version of that.
So glad someone remembers the good old days.
Don't forget the visitor counters.
Awesome!!
Can I assign a custom tags on a form? I'd love to differentiate when the form was submitted on a dev environment, a landing page 1 or landing page 2..
You can add a hidden field with the URL or a flag. You can also sort off that field in the results.
It's really awesome we were able to build this completely on Firebase's system. The zapier integration for email was clutch too. Ne sweat on the scaling.
I noticed the Firebase reference on your page. Very nicely done. I just started working with Angular and using Firebase is a no-brainer.
Their demo is really a pain to use in my 1024x700 browser windows. And even when I switch to fullscreen actually (but I'd rather not).
Making mobile-responsive tables is a pretty involved thing, and would have been even more complicated by the fact that the table sorts. I think that most people will be able to scroll if they happen to check the backend on a phone or 90's era computer.
I'm not using a mobile. I'm using a recent laptop, I just don't like to browse in fullscreen. Is it okay with you?
Are you referring to the large set of data we have there, or some other aspect(s) of the demo?
Hi,
On the demo backend, if I click on "download csv" or "get code" I can't go back except if I unzoom (because the closing X is out of my browser window, and it's almost true in fullscreen too).
On the demo form the buttons "view backend" and "view code" are strangely placed. If I go fullscreen then the page tries to adapt itself and the grey box goes from wide to floating on the right, but the form is still to large to be on its right so it stays under it.
Also it's probably just a matter of taste but I find it weird to have such bigs field but that the text I can write in them is still of normal size.
I could send you screenshots later if you want.
There's still some kinks to be worked out particularly in smaller screen sizes so I just wanted to clarify what exactly you were looking at. Thank you for the feedback.
looks sharp, but doesn't wufoo have a pretty solid foothold in this market?
We made this because we are particular about our markup and wufoo's iframe and banner in the form was a non-starter for our client's needs.
This. Wufoo is a PITA when it comes to doing custom stuff. I've spent hours mucking with css trying to overcome their layouts.
Yes. Their process is backwards. Lots of folks don't want to start with their markup. It'd be much better to be able to code up your forms and submit whatever you want.
Regrets for the sizing issue. Hopefully it still get's the job done.
Is the sample form suppose to look like this?
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/09b77l09xvfrta7/2014-02-2...
"how to milk a goat" LOL
The answer to this important question was tragically not found on our Fireform example, so they had to turn to Google. Haha
It's fixed now.
When I click any sort I get brought to a blank page with javascript:null
Same issue here in Firefox
What are your thoughts on pricing for this? How about a form builder?
We are not sure about pricing for now. We shied away from making a form builder. A la wufoo or google forms. This is made to be as close to HTML forms as possible. It's made to work on any static site with any form markup. If you are like us you are picky about your markup and wouldn't think of using an iframe.
makes sense. Since you used angular, I'd love to see JS form serialization that does good markup output. This way, you don't have to build a form builder (but I might), and the tool supports storing these forms in DB easily. Food for thought. I've written something like this already, and it's been very helpful.
do you need to design a schema for the backend or does it automatically create it based on the form data that is posted through?
It automatically creates the schema based on the form data :)
cool, what happens if I change the form?
Right now if you add fields, you'll automatically get that new column of data added. We haven't added a way to delete fields yet, so if you remove fields, you'll still see the old data in there.
You might be interested in our "Preemptive Schema Data Modeling" technology (http://crudzilla.com/doc/eu-doc/#data-modeling )
It basically allows you to do what you are doing without having to manage tables by adding and removing columns.
The idea is simple, preemptively create a table with a certain distribution of column types and then allow the developer to define models in their app and map properties of their model to available columns.
It is a pretty robust idea and works well, we use it in our product.
I'll be doing a thorough write up on it sometime in the near future.
Thanks Edmond! We used Firebase's validation rules to create a basic schema but something more robust might be called for in the future.
no problem, feel free to get in touch if you need assistance trying it out.