Online Contact Form With 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!

ⓘ I have included a zip file with all the source code at the start of this tutorial, so you don’t have to copy-paste everything… Or if you just want to dive straight in.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Download & Notes	Python Contact	Useful Bits & Links
The End

 

 

QUICK NOTES

• Create your own project folder, e.g. D:\contact, unzip the code inside this folder.
• Open the terminal (or command line), navigate to your project folder cd D:\contact.
• As usual, create a virtual environment if you don’t want to mess up your other projects.
  • virtualenv venv
  • Windows – venv\scripts\activate
  • Mac/Linux – venv/bin/activate
• Get all the packages – pip install Flask
• Launch! python 3-server.py and access http://localhost/.

If you spot a bug, feel free to comment below. I try to answer short questions too, but it is one person versus the entire world… If you need answers urgently, please check out my list of websites to get help with programming.

 

 

EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here to download all the example source code, I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

 

 

 

STEP 1) CONTACT FORM

THE HTML

<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.

 

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 { alert("Opps an error has occured."); }
  })
  .catch((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

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.

 

 

ROUTES – HTML PAGES

# (C) ROUTES
# (C1) CONTACT FORM
@app.route("/")
def index():
  return render_template("1-contact.html")
 
# (C2) THANK YOU PAGE
@app.route("/thank")
def thank():
  return render_template("2-thank.html")

Don’t think this needs much explanation:

• http://localhost/ to serve the contact form 1-contact.html.
• http://localhost/thank to serve the “thank you” page 2-thank.html.

 

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.

 

 

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.