Goodbye Webform? Contact Forms Are In the Drupal 8 Core
Now in Drupal 8, forms are in core. Will be saying to goodbye to those popular Drupal 7 modules? Read on and find out …
Video on Contact forms in Drupal 8
The Contact module in Drupal 8
By default, Drupal 8 has the Contact module enabled, which wasn’t true in Drupal 7.
The Contact module has also been greatly enhanced. No longer does it simply provide a contact form on user profiles.
Drupal 8 provides two default contact forms: “Personal contact form” and “Website feedback.”
“Personal contact form” is the form that’s added to each user’s profile:
“Website feedback” is a generic website contact form. Drupal automatically provides a link to this form from the footer:
Contact form settings
Each contact form has 2 main settings:
- Recipients
- Auto-reply
So you won’t see any of the more advanced Webform features such as redirecting users to particular URL after submission.
Contact form fields and settings
In Drupal 8 you can add fields to forms, so you can create complex forms with no contributed modules.
Forms also have custom elements: such as “Sender email,””Recipient username,” and “Send copy to sender.” These can be arranged in the “Manage Display” tab of each form.
Storing contact form messages
So can we say goodbye to Webform and Entityform and rely entirely on the Drupal 8 core? No. Not yet.
The one key feature that’s missing with the Contact module is the ability to store messages sent through the forms.
This is odd, because Drupal 8 deals with contact messages as entities. You can add comments to them, for example. You just can’t see them!
To solve this problem. you’ll need a contributed module called Contact Storage. The author says they hope to have this in core for Drupal 8.1 and that would make a lot of sense, filling this functionality gap.
After installing and enabling Contact Storage, you’ll see an addition tab with a list of messages:
As a maintainer of contact in core and contact_storage in contrib I want to point out that there are some things that webform is better suited to – that contact module cannot do.
These are
* Forms with lots of fields. Each field is a config object and this can increase the size of your fieldmap, as well as the number of tables. Webform stores its data in a single table, Field API stores fields in one-table per field. There is obviously a storage and performance implication there (This is the same issue with entityform in D7).
* Multipage forms (although fieldgroup in contrib might power this for contact module)
* Lots and lots of forms. Each contact form is a new entity-type bundle so adding lots is equivalent to adding lots of content types. (This is the same issue with entityform in D7).
That said, we have plans to bring elements of contact_storage to core in an 8.x point release (e.g. 8.1, 8.2) – please join the conversation on [url=https://www.drupal.org/node/2582955]https://www.drupal.org/node…[/url]
larowlan
Great, thanks indeed larowlan
That was very much the impression I got as a first time user of Contact. This will be great for basic forms, but power users will definitely need more.
Goodbye Webform? Nope, not yet.
Yes–I’d love to be moving some of my projects to D8, but Webform is a major piece of many of them (multipage at that). It’s one of the key issues holding back updating my projects at the moment.
Beyond just those technical differences, it’s important not to forget the usability differences. If your use case is to treat the forms as “content” that will be created by editors (e.g. surveys and polls), then Webform is definitely the better tool for the job. Its field creation UI is much less technical, and therefore easier to get working quickly, than Field UI.
Additionally to this, the ability to expose the form as a block is very important but doesn’t appear to have made its way to D8.
See [url=https://www.drupal.org/node/2615112]https://www.drupal.org/node…[/url] for a patch developed by Acquia that allows attaching contact forms to entities (by entity reference). As blocks are fieldable entities, you could create a custom block and attach a form as the only field in that block.
cool. Thank you tons for the link.
Just what the doctor ordered because there are currently no great solution for D8 at the moment. I didn’t know about contact storage so that might be a solution for me. eForm won’t be able to send emails until Rules is complete and Webform in D8 doesn’t really work yet. So Contact form (which I never ever used in D6 or D7), sounds like a good temp fix until webform is ready.
Unfortunately, 7 months after, the situation is the same… Currently I’m using eForm + custom module to send email o a couple of small projects, but I’m keeping D7 as main CMS for medium/big projects until D8 will be really ready.
Beyond creating simple contact forms, Webform is an extremely powerful tool. Its only flaw is that it doesn’t use Form API. Entityform could someday dethrone it, but for now Webform is the best thing around for building elaborate forms.
Just to be pedantic: webform does use the Form API… it doesn’t use the Field API. For that reason, if you have many different forms and/or many fields, it’s much lighter to use webform than entityform.
Yup, you’re absolutely correct. Webform uses Form API, but not Field API. That’s a real drag though because it’s not fully compatible with Views. If you want to do anything custom with the submission data you’re pretty much on your own. That’s really the only major drawback though.
Interesting and helpful article/comments! Many thanks for some clarification and background infos about technical differences.
I’m trying to migrate a D6 site to D8. D6 contact form used to have a “settings” page where I could paste some text info (contact information, phone etc). Can’t find anything like that in D8.
Those would be fields now in D8.
Well, fields render as input fields on the contact form page and I just need to put some predefined text above the form (street address, phone number, contact name etc). Some text intro above the form. Webform uses “html markup” [pseudo]fields for that. D6 uses one “settings” textarea. Contacts module in D7 and D8 offers nothing I guess. Much like Entity forms. The simplest way is to put a content block on the contact page but I personally hate blocks made for one specific page.
I dislike this method as well. Is it still true that this is the only way to do this in D8? It seems that we should have a method to add predefined text to contact forms.
You can also add a “Webform” content type, which has an entity reference field to a Contact form, which you set to Render as entity. Then you could have a Body field as well as the ER, which would give you a way to add text before the form. Not a great solution I know, but it works.
Hi i did my first site with Drupal 8 and i am really glad about the built in contactform , problem is it dosn t send mails i get both messages mail was send and mail couldn t be send and the mail is definitifly not sended . i did many tests and allways its the same result. Would be happy if someone can tell me how i can fix this. Thanks a lot Susanne
Hi there, is it possible to style the auto reply message? I’d like to add a company logo for example or tokens. Thanks.
I’d like to do the same, have you found any solution?
Can I attach contact form to a node?
You can by adding an entity reference field.
Thank you..
Is there a way to modify the emails sent by D8 contact form? The mails look very ugly and I wonder if there is a twig-template for the mails. Would be nice to hear from you.
@klemensforster My guess is you may need a similar approach to Drupal 7 [url=https://www.ostraining.com/blog/drupal/html-emails-from-drupal-webform/]https://www.ostraining.com/…[/url]
Yeah, but there are no E-Mail Settings for Drupal Contact Forms. So I can’t modify the template. Any other idea?
This is what you were looking for:
[code]
hook_mail_alter(&$message)
[/code]
You can switch to get the form you need:
[code]
(…)
switch ($message[‘id’]) {
case ‘contact’: (…)
case ‘node_insert’: (…)
}
(…)
[/code]
And you can edit the body of the message:
[code]
$message[‘body’][] …
[/code]
The complete API Reference: [url=https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core!core.api.php/function/hook_mail_alter/8]https://api.drupal.org/api/…[/url]
Saludos!!!
Looks good. But I just tried to use the MYTHEME_mail_alter() function. It doesn’t seem to do anything. Do mails ignore hooks in the MYTHEME.theme file? Would be very annoying. Do I have to code a custom module, just to alter the mails sent?
You’ll need to build a small plugin module to override the email formatting. I did some playing around with it myself a few months ago but was only successful in tripping out all of the formatting. I’m also looking to improve Contact Form formatting.
Did anyone find an easy way of theming the contact form mail?
Or can anyone give me a link to the small module to override the mail formatting?
I sure wish I would have found this post before I built a site in Drupal 8 because the lack of webform is a bit of a deal breaker for me. The built in contact form not only doesn’t store submissions, you can’t add a body field either, making it impossible to have a custom message above the form.
I installed the Dev version of webform but got php errors when I started building a form, I guess it’s not quite ready for prime time.
Hi Rich you could assign some content to a block region and have it only show on the form page if you want to provide information for the form. They have come along way and we have a few sub form modules that make it better now too.
Hi Rick,
As Daniel Pickering states you can place your custom message content in a custom block and assign it specifically to the contact form in the content area. To gain additional features like storing/exporting submissions, have a look at the the Contact Storage module.
Andrew and Daniel, thanks so much for the hot tips. Not only did the clever work around do the trick, I installed the new eForm module, which is the D8 replacement for EntityForm. I got a PHP error from it when I created my first form type but the error wasn’t fatal and I was able to continue generating the form. So now I have the best of all scenarios, I have my text a the top, I have a robust form that sends emails, stores the data, and since it uses Drupal entities, I can do all kinds of things like create a View to display submitted data. I clearly got my cake and got to eat it too. ~Rick
Hi Rick, I’ve not understand your message, are you using eForm? How does it send emails?
I apologize, I did say that it sends email but I was wrong, it does not. I’m working on using the Rules module to send emails but haven’t finished it yet.
Rules are still in alpha but I imagine they are very close to being officially stable soon.
It is worth mentioning that webform has some handy additional features, like the ability to limit the number of form submissions, both per user and per node form. That way, I can set, for example, a simple course subscription form that will stop getting new inputs when the number of available slots are taken. Also, the fact that a webform is linked to a given node, with all the possible configurations applied on each node form instance individually, gives admins flexibility. Webform’s approach is different from that of the core contact form module on Drupal 8 and it has some advantages. It would be great to see it ported to Drupal 8.
Oct 2016
1. Webform will not have port to D8 and eForm is abandoned.
2. Best alternatives in this moment: Contact Storage + Contact Form(Core) or YAML Form.
Thanks @dockodam I think you’re right on both points. This post may need an update.
As of Jan2017, YamlForm now is “Webform 8.x-5.x release” (It is the exact same code base).
Best alternatives in this moment(D8): Contact Storage + Contact Form(Core) or WebForm 8.x-5.x
Is it possible to have a drop down menu for recipients so a person submitting a form can contact a specific recipient. This functionality is available in Webform.
I found the solution in the last comment5 here
[url=http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/212820/contact-forms-change-recipient-address-dynamically-d8/213211]http://drupal.stackexchange…[/url]
I can not able to install the contact storage module. It is saying “Token module is missing”.
Install the Token module … that should solve the issue
Thanks. Can you please tell me the solution of other issue??
I have created a custom contact form like as the video is showing. Then I installed the captcha module and the form is showing good on the site [url=http://webappdesigns.com/projects/maxons_new/contact/apply_for_a_job]http://webappdesigns.com/pr…[/url] , But when we submitted this form I have got the following error –
[url
]https://uploads.disquscdn.c…[/url]
Can any one resolved such error message? If so please reply right solution. Thanks.
[url
]https://uploads.disquscdn.c…[/url]
Hello Steve, thank you for your article! I was wondering if there is a way to update the stored message programmatically? If it was a node I think I can do:
$node = Node::load($nid);
$node->body->value = ‘some new value’;
$node->save();
Is there an equivalent method for updating a stored message? Many thanks!
Chen
Hi Chen. It might be worth taking a look at how this module does it [url=https://www.drupal.org/project/contact_storage]https://www.drupal.org/proj…[/url]
There’s some great info here. Where does everyone sit currently, at the start of 2017? I am looking for a form solution where a user clicks on a link to a one-time URL, and can fill out the form once. There was a module for D7, which I might have to use, but I was wondering if there’s a special D8 way?
Webform may be making a revival: [url=https://www.drupal.org/project/webform]https://www.drupal.org/proj…[/url] Or to be more accurate, they took another module and renamed it “Webform”
Hi, I installed Webform 8.x-5.0-beta13 in my production environment. But when I select a few modules of it and install it, the site crashes….
I had a lot of work, to restore the site. How are other experiences?
Interesting article, yes contact and constate_storage are a great combination but even better is the webform module beacause it’s inspired from the user experience, it allows to buid forms, collects data, download the results and more other features.
Nowadays module yamlform asks users to download and install Webform 8.x-5.x or migrate to webform. [url=https://www.drupal.org/project/yamlform]https://www.drupal.org/proj…[/url].
The main thing to keep in mind though is to use what will best suit your need.
i had issue contact form auto save last name and email how to flush this
Hi, Steve. How to refer a contact form to field. I want refer a form to my paragraph type..
Thank you!
Hi!
How add contact form with shortcode help. I want add contact form to other site. Footer and contact site dont interrest me. Thx for help.
I’m having issue with contact form. Currently the reply to is the email of site; therefore the from and the reply to are the same? I would like the authenticated and the ananymous email to be in the reply to field when reply to contact submission. Is there a setting or module to help with this. P.S. The anonymous email is in the submission body but the authenticated is only the username and not the email.
How can i put a google map on top of contact form(Website feedback form).
See if this [url=https://www.ostraining.com/blog/drupal/static-google-maps-drupa]blog post[/url] helps any.