
.. _form_builder:

Form builder
============

The ``wagtailforms`` module allows you to set up single-page forms, such as a 'Contact us' form, as pages of a Wagtail site. It provides a set of base models that site implementers can extend to create their own ``FormPage`` type with their own site-specific templates. Once a page type has been set up in this way, editors can build forms within the usual page editor, consisting of any number of fields. Form submissions are stored for later retrieval through a new 'Forms' section within the Wagtail admin interface; in addition, they can be optionally e-mailed to an address specified by the editor.


Usage
~~~~~

Add ``wagtail.wagtailforms`` to your ``INSTALLED_APPS``:

.. code:: python

    INSTALLED_APPS = [
       ...
       'wagtail.wagtailforms',
    ]

Within the ``models.py`` of one of your apps, create a model that extends ``wagtailforms.models.AbstractEmailForm``:


.. code:: python
    
    from modelcluster.fields import ParentalKey
    from wagtail.wagtailadmin.edit_handlers import (FieldPanel, InlinePanel,
        MultiFieldPanel)
    from wagtail.wagtailcore.fields import RichTextField
    from wagtail.wagtailforms.models import AbstractEmailForm, AbstractFormField

    class FormField(AbstractFormField):
        page = ParentalKey('FormPage', related_name='form_fields')

    class FormPage(AbstractEmailForm):
        intro = RichTextField(blank=True)
        thank_you_text = RichTextField(blank=True)

    FormPage.content_panels = [
        FieldPanel('title', classname="full title"),
        FieldPanel('intro', classname="full"),
        InlinePanel('form_fields', label="Form fields"),
        FieldPanel('thank_you_text', classname="full"),
        MultiFieldPanel([
            FieldPanel('to_address', classname="full"),
            FieldPanel('from_address', classname="full"),
            FieldPanel('subject', classname="full"),
        ], "Email")
    ]

``AbstractEmailForm`` defines the fields ``to_address``, ``from_address`` and ``subject``, and expects ``form_fields`` to be defined. Any additional fields are treated as ordinary page content - note that ``FormPage`` is responsible for serving both the form page itself and the landing page after submission, so the model definition should include all necessary content fields for both of those views.

If you do not want your form page type to offer form-to-email functionality, you can inherit from AbstractForm instead of ``AbstractEmailForm``, and omit the ``to_address``, ``from_address`` and ``subject`` fields from the ``content_panels`` definition.

You now need to create two templates named ``form_page.html`` and ``form_page_landing.html`` (where ``form_page`` is the underscore-formatted version of the class name). ``form_page.html`` differs from a standard Wagtail template in that it is passed a variable ``form``, containing a Django ``Form`` object, in addition to the usual ``self`` variable. A very basic template for the form would thus be:

.. code:: html

    {% load wagtailcore_tags %}
    <html>
        <head>
            <title>{{ self.title }}</title>
        </head>
        <body>
            <h1>{{ self.title }}</h1>
            {{ self.intro|richtext }}
            <form action="{% pageurl self %}" method="POST">
                {% csrf_token %}
                {{ form.as_p }}
                <input type="submit">
            </form>
        </body>
    </html>

``form_page_landing.html`` is a regular Wagtail template, displayed after the user makes a successful form submission.
