forced submission delay - custom hook

17 Posts

Hans Reply #1, 12 years, 9 months ago

Hello,

at first let me say I’m quite new to modx. I wrote an easy contact form using FormIt. Now I’d like to introduce additional spam protection.

I want to delay the submission of a form by a certain amount of time. Meaning: When somebody opens the contact form until he sends the form, there has to be a certain amount of delay. Otherwise the form is not to be send. I’d like this check to be a custom hook.
As I don’t have much experience in coding snippets, I’d like to ask if anybody has a solution or a hint for me.
If we find a solution, it could be included in FormIt on the long run. Just an Idea.

I hope I could convey my request. Any help would be much appreciated.

PS: sorry for my English. It’s not my first language.

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #2, 12 years, 9 months ago

If I’m understanding you, you want to reject posts that are submitted too soon after the form is shown. You’d have to store the start time (either in a hidden form field or a $_SESSION variable., then add a hook (ahead of the email hook) that checks that time against the current time.

If it’s a simple contact form, you might look at SPForm, which has that check built in (and some other spam checks as well).

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17 Posts

Hans Reply #3, 12 years, 9 months ago

Thanks for your advise. You understood me right I’d like to stay with FormIt.
I did a little digging in your source code (SPForm). So far I came up with this hook:

<?php
/*'timer' is a hidden input element with the value of the first site view (startTime) */
$startTime = $hook->getValue('timer'); 
$currentTime = time();
/*at least 10 Sekunden*/
if ($startTime < ($currentTime-10)) {
  $value = true;
} else {
  $errorMsg = 'Please wait at least 10 seconds till the form is submitted.'; 
  $hook->addError('timer',$errorMsg); 
  $value false; 
}
return $value;

It is not working. Is there any error in the code? And is the corresponding placeholder for the error message: [[!+fi.error_timer]]?

Does anybody know, if a special placeholder for the time of the site view exists? At the moment I use this Snippet to insert the time value in the hidden input element:

<?php
return time();

I hope I’m not totally wrong. Any help would be appreciated, again.

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #4, 12 years, 9 months ago

I don’t see anything wrong.

I would try

die($startTime . '---' . time() );

To see what’s happening.

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17 Posts

Hans Reply #5, 12 years, 9 months ago

I got it working now. there was a typo in the code. grin

For everybody interested in this hook for FormIt here is the working code:

<?php
/* 'timer' is a hidden input element with the value of the first site view (startTime) */
$startTime = $hook->getValue('timer'); 
$currentTime = time();
/* at least 10 Sekunden */
if ($startTime < ($currentTime-10)) {
  $value = true;
} else {
  $errorMsg = 'Please wait at least 10 seconds till the form is submitted.';
  $hook->addError('timer',$errorMsg);
  $value = false;
}
return $value;

To insert the start time value in the hidden input field "timer", you need this Snippet:

<?php
return time();

Thanks Bob!

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #6, 12 years, 9 months ago

I’m glad you got it working. Thanks for reporting back.

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