Simple Example for using mail_form Gem and reCaptcha Gem in Rails 3¶ ↑

Author

Tilo Sloboda (www.unixgods.org/)

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 Tilo Sloboda

License

MIT

Home

www.unixgods.org/~tilo/Ruby/mail_form_example_with_recaptcha.html

Git

git://github.com/tilo/mail_form_example_with_recaptcha.git

mail_form Gem¶ ↑

The mail_form gem allows you to create forms directly in Rails 3 without a database backend. As soon as you submit the form, it gets emailed to an address you specify.

You might have read about the mail_form gem either on the web or in the Pragmatic Programmer’s book “Crafting Rails Applications”.

* https://github.com/plataformatec/mail_form
* http://pragprog.com/titles/jvrails/crafting-rails-applications

Unfortunately this example is incomplete:

* http://www.arailsdemo.com/posts/43

reCaptcha Gem¶ ↑

The recaptcha gem allows you to make sure that a human (not a bot) is submitting your forms. The recaptcha gem uses Google’s ReCAPTCHA service. ReCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows.

* https://github.com/ambethia/recaptcha
* http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore
* https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create

Getting Started¶ ↑

1. Clone this repository

   gem clone git://github.com/tilo/mail_form_example_with_recaptcha.git

2. Check your Gemfile and install the Gems

   emacs Gemfile
   bundle install
   

3. Set-Up a reCaptcha account with Google By default, your reCAPTCHA key is restricted to the specified domain, and any subdomains for additional security. This is why you need to sign-up, to get your API-key for your specific domain.

   https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create
   

4. Customize this example to fit your needs:

   • add your reCaptcha account information / add your private and public keys

     emacs config/initializers/recaptcha.rb
     

   • add your email settings / add your domain name and the email address where you want to receive the form data

     emacs config/initializers/setup_mail.rb
     emacs app/models/mail_forms/contact.rb
     

   • check Google’s instructions on how to customizing the look and feel of reCAPTCHA

     http://code.google.com/apis/recaptcha/docs/customization.html
     

   • you might want to change the :theme variable in the view file

     emacs app/views/mail_forms/contact/new.html.erb
     

5. Try out the Example Start the Rails application: rails s

   Point your browser to

   firefox http://localhost:3000/contact

Enjoy!

Appendix¶ ↑

Here’s the list of relevant files as a tree-view:

<pre> . ├── app │   ├── controllers │   │   ├── … │   │   └── mail_forms │   │   └── contact_controller.rb │   │   … │   ├── models │   │   └── mail_forms │   │   └── contact.rb │   │   … │   └── views │   └── mail_forms │   └── contact │   └── new.html.erb │   … ├── config │   │   … │   ├── initializers │   │   ├── recaptcha.rb │   │   └── setup_mail.rb │   │   …

</pre>