The Two Required Hidden Fields

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This page is part of the WebCom Forms Processor documentation, and explains in detail the two hidden fields which are required in any form submitted to the Forms Processor.

What are Hidden Fields?

Hidden fields are variables which are passed to the Forms Processor, like any other piece of data entered into a form by a client except that hidden fields and their values do not show up in the browser.

The Forms Processor must have two crucial bits of information to handle forms correctly. It must know what WebCom account a particular form belongs to, and the name of an optional configuration file which goes along with the form. To satisfy the first requirement, you need to include the following hidden field in your forms:

<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=userid VALUE="your_userid">

In the above tag, a variable named userid is passed to the Form Processor with the value of the customer userid.
Similarly, this tag:

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

passes a variable named form_name to the Forms Processor with the value set at whatever the configuration file is named. NOTE: Even if you do not have a configuration file, and don't plan to have one, you still need to have this field in your form. If you do not have a configuration file for the form, you can set the form_name variable to anything you like.

Example use of Hidden Fields in Forms

The following is the HTML for a simple WebCom form:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Sample Form </TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
<P>Sample Form</P>

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="http://webcom.com/~webcom/cgi-bin/form">
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=userid VALUE="your_userid">
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=form_name VALUE="any_name_you_choose">

Please Enter Your Name:<BR>
<INPUT TYPE=text NAME=your_name><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Submit">

</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>

When the above form is submitted, three variables are passed to the Forms Processor with their contents. If someone had entered, for example, "Rick Atlansky" as the name in the text input field, the variables and values passed to the Forms Processor would be:

your_name="Rick Atlansky" userid="your_userid" form_name="any_name_you_choose"

The Forms Processor then examines this data, and looks for a file named "any_name_you_choose.cfg" in the "your_userid" account. When it doesn't find such a file, it sends email to your_userid@webcom.com with your_name="Rick Atlansky" in the body of the message.

PLEASE NOTE: The only permissible uses of the Forms Processor are:

Invoking the form processor by specifying it in the ACTION of opening FORM tag as shown above. Other methods of invoking the form processor, including using the form processor in an anchor tag, are not permitted.
The form processor may only be invoked by forms in your WebCom account. You may not have a Web page on another Web server which invokes the WebCom form processor.

The above rules may be enforced by the system (your form won't work) or by WebCom management (access to the form processor may be disabled for your account if you have web pages which invoke the form processor illegally).

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