A Step-by-Step Example of using an HTML Form to send a "Contact Us" Message via Email without a Backend Server using a Google Script - No PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Node.js etc.
This tutorial has been forked from an existing tutorial by Sean McKenna. Thanks for sharing Sean!
Important: This solution publishes a form as a Google Apps Script Webapp. Webapps currently cannot be embedded in other webpages other than on Google Sites.
We needed a way of sending an email from from a "static" HTML page when you don't (want to) have a server.
- No "Backend" to Deploy/Maintain/Pay for
- Fully Customisabe - every aspect is customisable!
- Email sent via Google Mail which is Whitelisted Everywhere (high deliverability success)
- Collect/Store any form data in a Spreadsheet for easy viewing
(perfect if you need to share it with non-technical people)
Instead of using a server to send your email,
which is easy but requires maintenance,
use Google to send mail on your behalf
and use Google Spreadsheets to keep track of the data!
You could use a "free" service like http://formspree.io/ to process your form submissions if you don't care where you are sending your data and want to manage the data submitted
in your email inbox (messy ... yuck!)
Or... you can invest a few minutes and keep data private/manageable. Take your pick.
Sample: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kbd8CXZk-hCkdEXsQE70t7AnKYZ-uiLrOaZHrx8gZcE/copy
This should give you something like this:
Note: Feel free to change the name of the Copy to anything you want, it will not affect the outcome.
Open the Script editor... by clicking "Tools" > "Script editor..."
Here's a snapshot of the script you need (at this point in the exercise): script.gs
In the editor window you should expect to see:
Change the value of the TO_ADDRESS to which ever email you want to receive
the contact form message.
Using the template in index.html in the Script Editor,
create your own html file with the basic form. (save the file)
It's not immediately obvious but you have to click on "Manage Versions..."
Then create your new version:
Select the latest project version to deploy:
Open the Current web app url into a new browser tab. Then Click "OK".
Fill in some sample data in the HTML Form:
Submit the form. You should see a confirmation that it was sent:
Open the inbox for the email address you set in Step 3 (above)
Done. That's it. You just created an HTML form that sends email!
We are going to keep this Super Lean by using PURE CSS
for our Style (fix the "ugly" HTML Form in step 8).
And submit the form using Google Apps Script Client-to-Server Communication to keep the person
on your page/site (avoid "ugly" response page)
To prevent the page from changing when submitted the index.html file includes a preventFormSubmit function.
Update your index.html to include the following JavaScript file in the <head> of your file
<script>
// from https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/html/communication#forms
// Prevent forms from submitting.
function preventFormSubmit() {
var forms = document.querySelectorAll('form');
for (var i = 0; i < forms.length; i++) {
forms[i].addEventListener('submit', function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
});
}
}
window.addEventListener('load', preventFormSubmit);
function handleFormSubmit(formObject) {
google.script.run.withSuccessHandler(displayResult).record_data(formObject);
}
function displayResult(e) {
console.log(e);
document.getElementById('thankyou_message').style.display = 'block';
document.getElementById('gform').style.display = 'none';
}
<script>
Now when the form is submitted the form data is sent to our record_data() function in the script.gs file. When it finishes the displayResult() hides the form and will now display a "Thank You" message when the form is submitted:
Keeps the person on the same page. No refresh.
Taylor your message by editing the thankyou_message div:
For this example we are using Pure CSS: http://purecss.io/start/
because its light weight (4.0KB minified and gzipped)
and solves our current "problem": Making it Look Good.
Without spending too much time on this, we can make the form look a lot nicer:
Sending the form data directly to your email inbox is a good first step, but we can do better.
This will record the data received from the form submission as a row in the spreadsheet.
See: script.gs for the full code you can copy-paste.
The Setup Script gets the Name of your associated Google Spreadsheet so it knows where to put the data...
Follow Steps 4, 5 & 6 to save a new version and re-publish the script.
In response to Henry Beary's request we made the form handler generic which means you can now add any fields you want to the form.
remember to include the fields inside the form that has the id gform
and ensure that the name of the form element matches the new column heading in your spreadsheet.
e.g:
<fieldset class="pure-group">
<label for="color">Favourite Color: </label>
<input id="color" name="color" placeholder="green" />
</fieldset>This will allow you to capture the person's favourite color:
e.g:
Let us know if you have any questions!
- Google Apps Scripts Basics: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles
- Logger (like console.log): https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/base/logger
- Simple Mail Merge using Google Spreadsheets: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/mail_merge
- Original Tutorial: AJAX post to google spreadsheet: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10000020/ajax-post-to-google-spreadsheet which points to: