com_connect - form and contact mailer

colak · 2024-07-27 12:54:17

Bloke wrote #337472:

ext_file_attach will shortly be withdrawn from 4.9.0 onwards.

I’m using com_connect. ext_file_attach is no longer installed.

jakob · 2024-07-27 14:43:11

Bloke wrote #337474:

Oops. Good catch, thank you. If someone would please prep a PR for the patch, I can apply it. Thank you.

PR submitted :-)

Bloke · 2024-07-27 15:46:19

Merged. Thank you so much.

Bloke · 2024-08-28 11:08:59

I’ve just been alerted to a potential problem with hidden form fields using the delay attribute. The situation is that the site’s booking form has the following field in it to add a hidden field called “Human” between 8 and 12 seconds after someone begins interacting with the fields (not after page load):

<com::connect_text label="" name="Human" hidden default="1" expected="1" delay="8-12" required="0" />

So far so good. Except… when the visitor gets to the end of the booking form and hits Submit, if they have forgotten to fill out one of the required fields, the form is reloaded and the error is shown at the top. They scroll down to the offending field, type a value and hit Submit again. But they do that a lot faster, before the 8-12 second delay has taken effect from the moment they clicked in the missing input field, so the hidden value is not added to the form.

Result: Spam message and no form submission. Frustrated user.

We could perhaps do with some way to know (via a conditional tag?) that a form has been resubbed and, if it has, use a different, shorter delay, maybe based on the number of missing fields or something. Of course, we don’t want it too short or spambots will figure that out, submit any old random rubbish except for one Required field, and then benefit from a shorter timeout on resub whereby they can fill out all fields with their intended payload and have it delivered. I’m not sure if bots can do that, but I wouldn’t put it past them.

That seems like a convoluted approach. There has to be something better.

Anybody got any ideas on things we can put in the plugin or techniques we could employ to help in such situations?

phiw13 · 2024-08-29 07:28:34

@ Bloke

That is the plugin (validation) error reporting, right? In that case you might be able to detect that the form was submitted but not yet send because of the error ? And then, use a basic com_connect_expect tag (as in the example in the help file), without the delay. Or maybe do that anyway when an error is reported to the user (after all, the page is reloaded).

While looking at the delay attribute the other day, I was wondering what happens with the delay with the browser build-in validation routine active – a required field is not filled or not filled according to an expected pattern (e.g URL, email address). The bot deliberately skips one (required) field and submits the form. The browser blocks the submit action to flag the error fields. Does the counter still runs? If yes, then the bot now fills the missing field but the delay is over.

–^–

And a little Q. while we are talking about those honeytrap blocks. Is it possible to insert one or other spam trap randomly?

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#469 2024-07-27 12:54:17

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

Bloke wrote #337472:

#470 2024-07-27 14:43:11

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

Bloke wrote #337474:

#471 2024-07-27 15:46:19

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#472 2024-08-28 11:08:59

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#473 2024-08-29 07:28:34

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

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