Simple Contact Form In Python Flask (Free Download)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to create a simple online contact form with Python Flask. So you want to create a contact form, but don’t want to deal with Django or all the crazy database stuff? Well, here’s a quick alternative with Flask – Read on!

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Source code on GitHub Gist

Just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

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QUICK SETUP

• Create a virtual environment virtualenv venv and activate it – venv\Scripts\activate (Windows) venv/bin/activate (Linux/Mac)
• Install required libraries – pip install flask
• For those who are new, the default Flask folders are –
  • static Public files (JS/CSS/images/videos/audio)
  • templates HTML pages

 

STEP 1) CONTACT PAGE

1A) HTML CONTACT FORM

<form id="contactForm" onsubmit="return send();">
  <label for="name">Name</label>
  <input type="text" name="Name" required>
 
  <label for="email">Email</label>
  <input type="email" name="Email" required>
 
  <label for="message">Message</label>
  <textarea name="Message" required></textarea>
 
  <input type="submit" value="Go!" id="contactGo">
</form>

The first step should be self-explanatory. There’s nothing “special” here, this is just a simple HTML contact form. Feel free to change this form and add your own required fields.

 

1B) THE JAVASCRIPT

// (A) SEND CONTACT FORM
function send () {
  // (A1) PREVENT MULTIPLE SUBMIT
  document.getElementById("contactGo").disabled = true;
 
  // (A2) COLLECT FORM DATA
  let data = new FormData(document.getElementById("contactForm"));
 
  // (A3) SEND!
  fetch("/book", { method:"POST", body:data })
  .then(res => {
    if (res.status==200) { location.href = "/thank"; }
    else {
      console.log(res);
      alert("Opps an error has occured.");
    }
  })
  .catch(err => {
    console.error(err);
    alert("Opps an error has occured.");
  });
  return false;
}

Next, we have a small bit of Javascript to handle the form submission.

• (A1) Disable the “submit” button to prevent multiple submissions.
• (A2 & A3) Collect the contact form, and send it to the server side with AJAX fetch post.

 

 

STEP 2) THANK YOU PAGE

<h1>Thank You</h1>
<p>We have received your contact request</p>

A dummy “thank you page” on successful contact form submission. Once again, feel free to add your own message here.

 

STEP 3) SERVER-SIDE FORM HANDLING

3A) INITIALIZE

# (A) INIT
# (A1) LOAD REQUIRED PACKAGES
from flask import Flask, render_template, request, make_response
from werkzeug.datastructures import ImmutableMultiDict
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
 
# (A2) FLASK INIT
app = Flask(__name__)
# app.debug = True
 
# (B) SETTINGS
HOST_NAME = "localhost"
HOST_PORT = 80
MAIL_FROM = "sys@site.com"
MAIL_TO = "admin@site.com"
MAIL_SUBJECT = "Contact Form"

The first few sections of the server side are nothing more than loading the required packages and defining the settings. A reminder here to change the settings to your own, especially the email.

 

 

3B) ROUTES – HTML PAGES

# (C) ROUTES
# (C1) CONTACT FORM
@app.route("/")
def index():
  return render_template("S1A_contact.html")
 
# (C2) THANK YOU PAGE
@app.route("/thank")
def thank():
  return render_template("S2_thank.html")

Don’t think this needs much explanation:

• http://localhost/ to serve the contact form S1A-contact.html.
• http://localhost/thank to serve the “thank you” page S2_thank.html.

 

3C) CONTACT FORM SUBMISSION

# (C3) SEND CONTACT FORM
@app.route("/send", methods=["POST"])
def foo():
  # EMAIL HEADERS
  mail = MIMEMultipart("alternative")
  mail["Subject"] = MAIL_SUBJECT
  mail["From"] = MAIL_FROM
  mail["To"] = MAIL_TO
 
  # EMAIL BODY (BOOKING DATA)
  data = dict(request.form)
  msg = "<html><head></head><body>"
  for key, value in data.items():
  msg += key + " : " + value + "<br>"
  msg += "</body></html>"
  mail.attach(MIMEText(msg, "html"))
 
  # SEND MAIL
  mailer = smtplib.SMTP("localhost")
  mailer.sendmail(MAIL_FROM, MAIL_TO, mail.as_string())
  mailer.quit()
 
  # HTTP RESPONSE
  res = make_response("OK", 200)
  return res

Remember that the Javascript will “send the contact form via AJAX fetch”? This part handles the form submission – Collects the form data, and sends it to the email address that you have specified.

 

 

3D) START!

# (D) START!
if __name__ == "__main__":
  app.run(HOST_NAME, HOST_PORT)

Finally, Captain Obvious at your service – This starts the HTTP web server.

 

 

EXTRA) MAIL SEND

Please take note that we are using mailer = smtplib.SMTP("localhost") to send emails. If your server is running Mac/Linux, things should work fine as long as sendmail is in place. But for Windows users, I will recommend installing Papercut SMTP for easy testing.

P.S. We can also configure smtplib to use a remote SMTP server. Just read their documentation.