There are many paid form handling API services out there. Some service have free-tier accounts, but are very limited. But who wants to pay for the simple function of sending a form to an email address?
If all you want to do is collect information from a website user and email it to yourself and also send a confirmation email to the user, and you don't need any database storage, then this tutorial is for you!
This tutorial is part two of a series on creating web forms using Next.JS, React-Hook-Form, Yup and Bootstrap. You'll want to read the first article, Next.JS - Kick-Ass Form Handling Using React-Hook-Form, Yup and Bootstrap, before proceeding.
Step 1 - Set Up Our Environment
First we need to add a couple additional packages to our project to handle the back-end of our form.
npm install nodemailer axios
Now, to use your Gmail account as a form mailer, you'll need to log in to your Google account and set up an App Password for the back-end API to use. If you're unsure how to do this, check out This Tutorial.
Next, let's set up our local dev environment. Create a file in the root directory called .env.local:
NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000
NEXT_PUBLIC_GMAIL_USER=example@gmail.com
NEXT_PUBLIC_GMAIL_PASS=your_gmail_app_password
Step 2 - Create Our Back-End Form Handler
Ok, the first thing we need to do is create a back-end API endpoint to handle our form data and send it to our gmail account.
Create a folder in the public folder called email-templates. These templates will be used by the API backend. Each email will have an HTML and Plaintext version.
template.html:
This file will be used by all email templates.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Montserrat:wght@400;600&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
body {
background-color: #171717;
color: #d8d8d8;
font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif;
padding: 1em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
%BODY%
</body>
</html>
admin.html:
<h1>New Message From Website</h1>
<p>The following information was submitted:</p>
<p>Name: %NAME%</p>
<p>Email: %EMAIL%</p>
<p>Message:</p>
<p>%MESSAGE%</p>
admin.txt:
New Message From Website
The following information was submitted:
Name: %NAME%
Email: %EMAIL%
Message:
%MESSAGE%
customer.html:
<h1>We Received Your Message!</h1>
<p>Dear %NAME%:</p>
<p>Thank you for inquiring. We just wanted to let you know that we've received your message and will be responding soon.
</p>
<p>Have a great day!</p>
<p>The Webmaster</p>
customer.txt:
Message Received!
Dear %NAME%:
Thank you for inquiring. We just wanted to let you know that we've received your message and will be responding soon.
Have a great day!
- The Webmaster
Now let's create a file called contact-form.js in the /pages/api/ directory:
import axios from 'axios';
const nodemailer = require("nodemailer");
// Config
const mailConfig = {
host: "smtp.gmail.com",
port: 465, // or 587
secure: true, // true for 465, false for other ports
auth: {
user: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GMAIL_USER, // your gmail account
pass: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GMAIL_PASS // your gmail app password
}
}
const adminEmail = 'The Webmaster <example@gmail.com>';
// Function for grabbing template files
async function getPubFile(file) {
const res = await axios.get(`${process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL}${file}`);
return res.data;
}
export default async function handler(req, res) {
sendEmails(req, res);
}
async function sendEmails(req, res) {
// Create our Nodemailer transport handler
let transporter = nodemailer.createTransport(mailConfig);
// Fetch our template files
const template = await getPubFile("/email-templates/template.html");
const custHtml = await getPubFile("/email-templates/customer.html");
const adminHtml = await getPubFile("/email-templates/admin.html");
const custTxt = await getPubFile("/email-templates/customer.txt");
const adminTxt = await getPubFile("/email-templates/admin.txt");
// Format our recipient email address
const recipEmail = `${req.body.name} <${req.body.email}>`;
// Format our customer-bound email from received form data
let sendHtml = template.replace("%BODY%", custHtml)
.replace("%NAME%", req.body.name)
.replace("%EMAIL%", req.body.email)
.replace("%MESSAGE%", req.body.message);
let sendTxt = custTxt
.replace("%NAME%", req.body.name)
.replace("%EMAIL%", req.body.email)
.replace("%MESSAGE%", req.body.message);
// Send our customer-bound email
let info = await transporter.sendMail({
from: adminEmail,
to: recipEmail, // list of receivers
subject: "Message Received ✔", // Subject line
text: sendTxt, // plain text body
html: sendHtml, // html body
});
if (!info.messageId) {
res.status(200).json({ status: 0, message: "Failed to send message!" });
return false;
}
sendHtml = template.replace("%BODY%", adminHtml)
.replace("%NAME%", req.body.name)
.replace("%EMAIL%", req.body.email)
.replace("%MESSAGE%", req.body.message);
sendTxt = adminTxt
.replace("%NAME%", req.body.name)
.replace("%EMAIL%", req.body.email)
.replace("%MESSAGE%", req.body.message);
info = await transporter.sendMail({
from: recipEmail,
to: adminEmail, // list of receivers
subject: req.body.subject ? req.body.subject : "New Message From Website ✔", // Subject line
text: sendTxt, // plain text body
html: sendHtml, // html body
});
if (info.messageId) {
res.status(200).json({ status: 1 });
} else {
res.status(200).json({ status: 0, message: "Failed to send message!" });
}
}
Step 3 - Modify Our Front-End Form to Submit to Our API
Assuming you have completed the first tutorial, edit the /pages/index.js to look like this:
import React from 'react';
import Link from 'next/link';
import { Col, Container, Row, Navbar, Form, Button } from 'react-bootstrap';
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
import * as yup from "yup";
import { yupResolver } from "@hookform/resolvers/yup";
import axios from 'axios';
export default function Home() {
// Initialize our states
const [isSubmitting, setIsSubmitting] = React.useState(false);
const [isSubmitted, setIsSubmitted] = React.useState(false);
// Yup error message overrides
const errMess = {
req: "Please fill this out"
};
// Our Yup Schema for this form
const ContactSchema = yup.object().shape({
name: yup.string()
.label('Full Name')
.required(errMess.req)
.min(3)
.max(20),
email: yup.string()
.label('Email Address')
.required(errMess.req)
.email('Invalid Email Address'),
message: yup.string()
.label('Message')
.required(errMess.req)
.min(10)
.max(1000),
});
// Destruct useForm() and set our Yup schema as the validation resolver
const {
register,
handleSubmit,
formState: { errors },
} = useForm({
resolver: yupResolver(ContactSchema)
});
// Send our valid form data to our back-end API
const submitForm = async (data) => {
setIsSubmitting(true);
const res = await axios({
method: 'POST',
url: '/api/contact-form',
data: data
}).then((res) => {
setIsSubmitting(false);
return res;
}).catch((e) => {
alert("An error occurred. See log for details.")
console.error(e);
});
if (res.data.status === 1) {
setIsSubmitted(true);
} else {
alert(res.data.message);
}
};
return (
<>
<Navbar bg="dark" expand="lg">
<Navbar.Brand>
<Link href="/">
Home
</Link>
</Navbar.Brand>
</Navbar>
<Container>
{!isSubmitted ?
<>
<h1 className='mb-5'>Next.JS Form to Email Example</h1>
<Form onSubmit={handleSubmit((data) => submitForm(data))}>
<Row>
<Col>
<Form.Group className="mb-3" controlId="nameField">
<Form.Label>Full Name</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="text"
placeholder="e.g. John Doe"
isInvalid={errors.name}
{...register('name')}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type='invalid'>
{errors.name?.message}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Col>
<Col>
<Form.Group className="mb-3" controlId="emailField">
<Form.Label>Email Address</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
type="email"
placeholder="e.g. john@example.com"
isInvalid={errors.email}
{...register('email')}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type='invalid'>
{errors.email?.message}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Col>
<Col lg={12}>
<Form.Group className="mb-3" controlId="messageField">
<Form.Label>Message</Form.Label>
<Form.Control
as="textarea"
rows={5}
placeholder="Please type your message..."
isInvalid={errors.message}
{...register('message')}
/>
<Form.Control.Feedback type='invalid'>
{errors.message?.message}
</Form.Control.Feedback>
</Form.Group>
</Col>
</Row>
<Row>
<Col>
<Button variant="primary" type="submit" disabled={isSubmitting}>
{isSubmitting ? 'Sending...' : 'Submit'}
</Button>
</Col>
</Row>
</Form>
</>
:
<>
<h1>Thank you!</h1>
<p>Your message has been received. Please check your email for confirmation.</p>
</>
}
</Container>
</>
)
}
Run npm run dev and navigate to https://localhost:300 and give 'er a whirl. Hopefully, you'll see this result:
Well, it's been quite a journey! We now have a complete self-contained app that will collect data from a website user and then email it to the admin. And we require no third-party services except Gmail (which is free) and Vercel (which is also free) to host your app.
If you want the full code base for this project, you can clone my repository here.
For more great information, please visit the Designly Blog.
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