Common Errors When Creating Forms

This page is part of the Web Communications documentation concerning creating and using fill-in forms with your WebCom Web site.

• Incorrect Form "Action"
• Required Hidden Fields
• Missing "form" Directory
• Incorrect "form_name"
• Other Common Problems
• Default Form Behavior

Any Form using these the WebCom Forms Processor or Glimpse Indexing must use the following syntax for the ACTION parameter:

• WebCom Forms Processor:

<FORM METHOD=post ACTION="http://webcom.com/~webcom/cgi-bin/form">

• WebCom Glimpse Indexing service:

<FORM METHOD=post ACTION="http://webcom.com/~webcom/cgi-bin/glimpse">

The WebCom Forms Processor looks for two hidden fields, which contain your WebCom userid and the name of the form being processed. If these are missing, an error message informing you that it could not identify the form name and/or the form owner.

<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME="form_name" VALUE="nameofyourform">
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME="userid" VALUE="youruserid">

The WebCom Forms Processor looks for the configuration file, in a directory called "form", located in your home directory (the same directory within which your "www" directory is stored). The proper directory structure is shown below:

/pub
   /youruserid
     /adm
     /form
     /logs
     /www

If the "form" directory is missing, or you have placed the configuration file in your "www" directory, the Forms Processor assumes you have not created a form configuration file and engages in its default behavior.

Typical mistakes are to create a form configuration file named "filename.cfg", and then create hidden fields where the value of "form_name" is "filename.cfg" or "filename.html". The correct value is "filename", with the ".cfg" portion omited. An example of this is shown below:

<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME="form_name" VALUE="nameofyourform">

The WebCom Forms Processor then automatically appends ".cfg" to the value stored in the form_name parameter, and looks for a configuration file called "nameofyourform.cfg" in your "form" directory.

If "filename.cfg" is the value, the Forms Processor will look for "filename.cfg.cfg" in your "form" directory, and not finding it, engages in its default behavior.

One other problem which can cause confusion is improperly opening the Form. Netcruiser (the WWW browser supplied by Netcom) ignores this, but Netscape will redisplay the form when it is submitted, rather than calling the WebCom Forms Processor as the action of the following line instructs it to.

Wrong:

<FORM> (this causes Netscape to become confused, Netcruiser ignores it)
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://webcom.com/~webcom/cgi-bin/form">

Right:

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://webcom.com/~webcom/cgi-bin/form">

If the WebCom Forms Processor does not find the "form" directory, or does not find a form configuration file it can match to the "form_name" parameter in the HTML file containing the form into which the data being processed was entered, it assumes you have not created a configuration file, and uses its default behavior: sending you the content of your form in an e-mail message, and returning the standard message "Your Form has been submitted. Thank You!" to the users screen.