Form Widget (Embed Code)

Introduction

Embed code are a few lines of html and javascript that you can use to embed an iform4u’ form into your own website. This is the easiest way to display a form on your site and the method least susceptible to errors. Also, one of the most important things about the form widget is that every time you make a change to your form in the form builder, the embedded form will automatically update.

The Form Widget has been designed to work on any web page. Our Form Widget basically creates an iFrame on the fly, and the form will be loaded in it. Then, since it creates the iFrame, it can also resize it and that means there's no need to update the code every time you make some change. Also, when you keep a form inside an iFrame, you also prevent it from conflicting with existing JavaScript or CSS elements on your page.

Which Form Embed Code Should I Use

Right now iform4u offers two options for publishing a form in your web site:

1. Embed with Design: Lets you publish the form with the theme that has been applied to the form.
2. Embed without design: Lets you publish the form without any theme, even if you have applied one to your form.

Usually, the first option is the one you should use.

How to populate a Field with a Querystring

You can populate a field with URL parameters. Just make sure to use the Field ID or Field Alias as the parameter key, then the value assigned to this parameter will appear in the field.

Note: If you are using a Multi-Step Form, you can go to a specific page by appending the page number to the URL, for example to go to the second page add the "p=2" query string.

How to listen postMessages sent by the Form Widget

To be able to listen to the messages sent by the Form Widget, you simply have to add an event listener to your web page. For example, if you need to know a submission ID from your own webpage, you can add this code bellow the pasted embed code:

window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);function receiveMessage(event) {    if (event.data) {        var data = JSON.parse(event.data);        if (typeof data.action !== "undefined" && data.action === "success") {            console.log("Submission saved with ID", data.data.id);        }    }}

Form Widget Setting

The Form Widget (embed code) has two parts:

1. An HTML code that displays the default content if the user accesses the form when JavaScript is disabled in his browser. By default, a link to your form within a DIV element is displayed.
2. A Javascript code that is responsible for displaying the form and initialize the Form Tracker (if Analytics is enabled).

The form widget allows you to set some options of the form on the fly:

• Id: Form's ID in the application. For example: 'id': 132
• Sid: Submission ID. Use this option to edit a form submission previously collected. To find the Submission ID, go to the Submission Manager. For example: 'sid': 964
• Container: ID of the HTML element where the form's iframe will be inserted. By default, points to the DIV ID that contains the link to the form. For example: 'container': 'c132'
• Width: Specifies the width of the form's iframe. For example: 'width': '100%'
• Height: Specifies the height of the form's iframe. Usually, the embed code comes set with a value in pixels. This value is calculated by the Form Builder at the time of its creation. For example: 'height': '846px'
• Auto Resize: By default, is enabled. Indicates whether the iframe can automatically resize to the real height of the form. For example, when validation messages are shown. If set to false, the form does not resize and its height will be defined in the "height" option. For example: 'autoResize': !0
• Theme: By default, is enabled. Is a integer value (1 or 0) that lets you enable or disable a theme on the fly. For example: 'theme': 1
• Custom JS: By default, is enabled. Is a integer value (1 or 0) that lets you enable or disable the loading of external javascript files on the fly. For example: 'customJS': 1
• Record: By default, is enabled. Is a integer value (1 or 0) that lets you enable or disable the Form Tracker on the fly. For example: 'record': 1
• Reset: By default, is enabled. Is an integer value (1 or 0) that lets you enable or disable the form reset when form is submitted. For example: 'reset': 0
• Page: In a Multi-Step Form, this option specifies the page we want to display by default. For example, to display the second page: 'page': 2
• Form: Specifies the path to the form's embed. It contains no parameters.
• addToOffsetTop: By default, is 0. Add or subtract a number of pixels to OffsetTop before calculating the form location. This allows correct the form location when html elements on the website (like a header) have the CSS property: "fixed". For example: 'addToOffsetTop': '-60'
• Default Values: If you want to pre-fill form fields with default values, you can use this option. Default Values is a JSON object where your key is the id of the form field and its value is the content of the field. For example:

'defaultValues': {    'text_0': 'This is my default value'}

Note that checkboxes and radio buttons will be selected with boolean values. For example:

'defaultValues': {    'text_0': 'This is my default value',    'checkbox_0': true}

The Form Widget contains many features and options that can be configured inside an external JavaScript File.

Note: To load a JavaScript File you must go to Forms -> Actions -> Settings -> UI Settings.

By default, a jQuery object is available. So you can interact with the Form in a very simple way by using the following lines of code:

$( document ).ready(function() {  // Here we can interact with the Form});

The Form element

The Form element - formEl - is a jQuery object to which you can access for get information and/or manipulate it directly. For example, we're going to know the high of our form with the following lines of code:

$( document ).ready(function() {  console.log('The form height is', formEl.height());});

Listening for Events

Certain events are triggered when the Form does something.

• view: This event will be triggered when a form has been viewed.
• fill: This event will be triggered the first time you interact with the form. For example, by fill a text field or select a radio button.
• error: This event will be triggered when the Server threw a validation error.
• success: This event will be triggered when the Form has been submitted successfully.
• nextStep: This event will be triggered each time you progress to the next step in a multi-step form.
• previousStep: This event will be triggered each time you go back one step in a multi-step form.

A very basic example for detecting when a form fail would be:

$( document ).ready(function() {    formEl.on('error', function(event) {        /* Track a server validation error */          /* What happens here would be dependent on your analytics product! */    });});

The Rule Engine also triggers the following events when a field is shown or hidden by using conditional rules:

To implement this feature, the rule engine will trigger the following events:

• ef.shown: This event will be triggered when a field has been shown.
• ef.hidden: This event will be triggered when a field has been hidden.

Then, to interact with these events just write the event listeners. For example:

$( document ).ready(function() {  $('#text_1').on('ef.shown', function(e) {    console.log("This text field has been shown.")  });  $('#text_1').on('ef.hidden', function(e) {    console.log("This text field has been hidden.")  });});

The Event Handlers: previousStep and nextStep

In addition to the events, iform4u offers two event handlers that allow you to go backward and forward a page on a Multi-Step form ready to use using JavaScript. For example, now we're going to see how to forward a page without pressing the button "Next" using the auto-advance feature.

Auto-Advance in Multi-Step Forms

By default, when you create a Multi-Step Form, two navigation buttons are added automatically: "Previous" and "Next" at the bottom of the form. These buttons allow you to navigate through the form until you reach the last page where usually the Submit button is placed.

Note: iform4u lets you add multiple Submit buttons on different pages or parts of the form.

However, in certain use cases you can may want to advance directly to the next page without pressing any buttons. For this we will make use of the “nextStep” event handler.

Note: Some use cases in which this feature is useful are surveys and/or tests where is not allowed to change response and lets to complete the survey as soon as possible.

For example, with the following lines of code, we are going to tell our Form that each time a radio button is selected, the form will forward to the next page:

$( document ).ready(function() {    $('input[type=radio]').on('change', nextStep);});

Finally, if you want to hide the navigation buttons you can add the following lines in the CSS Theme assigned to your form:

.previous, .next {    display: none !important;}

Upload Multiple JavaScript and CSS files in our Form

By having the jQuery object, we can make use of jQuery.when().done() to load multiple javascript objects and make use of them once they are ready to use. Let’s see the following example.

Display a jQuery UI DatePicker in a Date field

For example, with the following lines of code we will show a jQuery UI DatePicker in the Date fields of the form:

$( document ).ready(function() {    $.when(        $('head').append('<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.11.4/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui.css" type="text/css" />'),        $.getScript( "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.11.4/jquery-ui.min.js" ),        $.Deferred(function( deferred ){            $( deferred.resolve );        })    ).done(function(){        $('body').css('padding-bottom', '200px'); // Padding for show the datepicker        $('input[type=date]').each(function () {            $(this).attr('type', 'text').after(                $(this).clone().attr('id', this.id + '_alt').attr('name', this.id + '_alt')                    .datepicker({                        // Consistent format with the HTML5 picker                        dateFormat: 'mm/dd/yy',                        changeMonth: true,                        changeYear: true,                        altField: this,                        altFormat: "yy-mm-dd"                    })            )            .hide();        });    });});

As you can see:

• We're loading 2 files within the function when() : jquery-ui.css and jquery-ui.min.js .
• We have inserted a function that will run when the previous two files are loaded on the page within the function done() .
• The function basically runs 3 Instructions:
  1. Find all fields of type " date " and convert each field " date " in " text ".
  2. Clone each Date field in a Text field that displays the DatePicker.
  3. Hides the Date field, because its value will be established automatically by the DatePicker, by the attributes: altField and altFormat .