how to create a plain html form in yii2? - html

Question

I tried e.g
<form id='blah' action='myActionController' method='post'>
//fields here
<input type='submit' name='submit' value='button name' />
</form>
after clicking the button, it does land to the www.mydomain.com/site/myActionController
but then, the page content is
Bad Request (#400)
Unable to verify your data submission.
The above error occurred while the Web server was processing your request.
Please contact us if you think this is a server error. Thank you.
I just don't want to use the active form...
so how to do the form in a plain html version without using the built-in yii
active form?

Answer 1

You need to add CSRF data for your submission to be verified.
Easiest way is to use static method \yii\web\Html::beginForm() that will do that for you (and take care of generating proper form tag).
The code to generate your form will be something like:
<?= \yii\web\Html::beginForm('myActionController') ?>
<input type='submit' name='submit' value='button name'>
<?= \yii\web\Html::endForm() ?>
You can of course switch CSRF verification off but this is not recommended. Without this verification your plain form will work.

Answer 2

In yii2 if you want a link for myActionController you should use this notation
(assuming that you have a controller named site and an action named myActionController)
<form id='blah' action='my-action-controller' method='post'>
//fields here
could be you need proper url and for this could be useful the UrlHelper
this way
use yii\helpers\Url;
.....
echo "<form id='blah' action='" . Url::to(['/site/my-action-controller']) .
"' method='post'>";

Answer 3

The best way is to clone existing ContactForm model which is already using sendEmail function and add your own properties, rules and attributeLables. On sendEmail function, you can include all necessary fields that you want to receive in ->setTextBody as a string and using concatenation as below:
public function sendEmail($email)
{
return Yii::$app->mailer->compose()
->setTo($email)
->setFrom([$this->email => $this->name])
->setSubject($this->subject)
->setTextBody($this->name. ' ' .'has requested'. 'space here'. $this->customfield. ' etc.')
->send();
}
After customizing the contactForm model, you can copy the actionContact on site controller and add it to your Form controller as actionIndex or anything, also copy Captcha and error on public function actions()
Now we will create a plain html form in yii2 as follows:
In my example i am using registerForm as my model(take note on how i use that model on id and name fields for yii2 to send the form without problems)
<?php $form = ActiveForm::begin(); ?>
<div class="col-md-12">
<input type="text" id="registerform-name" placeholder="Institution's Name*" name="RegisterForm[name]" required>
</div>
<div class="col-md-12">
<select id="registerform-institution" name="RegisterForm[institution]">
<option value="" disabled selected hidden>Select Institution's Type*</option>
<option value="Secondary School">Secondary School</option>
<option value="High School">High School</option>
<option value="College">College</option>
<option value="University">University</option>
</select>
</div>
<div class="col-md-12">
<input type="tel" id="registerform-number" placeholder="Institution's Phone Number*" name="RegisterForm[number]" required>
</div>
<div class="col-md-12">
<input type="text" id="registerform-pname" placeholder="Principal's Name*" name="RegisterForm[pname]" required>
</div>
<div class="col-md-12">
<input type="email" id="registerform-email" class="form-control" name="RegisterForm[email]" placeholder="Principal's eMail Address*" name="email" required>
</div>
<div class="col-md-12">
<?= $form->field($model, 'verifyCode')->widget(Captcha::className(), ['captchaAction' => '/register/default/captcha', 'template' => '<div class="row"><div class="col-lg-4">{image}</div><div class="col-lg-8">{input}</div></div>',
]) ?>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<?= Html::submitButton('Register', ['class' => 'theme-btn theme-btn4']) ?>
</div>
Back to my model: i had the following Properties and my form is sending well with proper validation, etc:
<?php
namespace register\models;
use Yii;
use yii\base\Model;
class RegisterForm extends Model
{
public $name;
public $institution;
public $number;
public $pname;
public $email;
public $verifyCode;