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Creating Your FirstClass Form

The first step is to create your FirstClass form.
It is beyond the scope of this tutorial to describe how to build a FirstClass form using FirstClass Designer. This lesson will point out required fields and what field types you can use.

Required Fields

Believe it or not, there are no "required fields" . You can leave the To:, From:, and Subject: fields off your form and your form will still get submitted if it is addressed properly from your Web form.
Note: Even if you leave the From: field off the form, the from address will still be associated with the form and can be displayed in the container columns.
You can, however add these three message envelope fields to your form if you like.

Supported Field Types

The message envelope will support the following different types of FirstClass fields when submitted via a form and perl script generated by the Web2Form application.

  • Text Fields
  • Number fields
  • Checkbox Fields
  • Radio Groups
  • Editable Selection Lists
  • Date Fields

Limitations

There are two different types of text fields. One is the basic, one line text field and the other is a text field with text-wrap enabled. This is the equivalent of a form "textarea" type field. Unfortunately, FirstClass cannot received textarea fields properly with the exception of the message body. Any textarea field on your Web form will have the linefeeds (returns) replaced by the '->" characters

What you must know for the FirstClass Web2Form application

Once you have your form built and tested by sending a message to a conference on FIrstClass using the form, you can build your web form and generate the html file and the corresponding perl template. You do this using the FirstClass Web2Form application.
Note: You must make sure that the conference is published to the directory so that it can receive emails from the Internet.
You must know the following information about your form:

  1. Form ID
  2. Form Icon ID
  3. Field IDs of all custom (non message envelope fields)
  4. The option attributes for any editable selection list fields
  5. The text and values for each radio button