How to create a kentico form that does not store the response - forms

Question

Is there any way in Kentico to have a user submit a form and then email the response but not actually save the answer to the related table?

Answer 1

As mentioned the emails from Kentico rely on the record being written to the DB before they trigger. Furthermore (unless I'm just unlucky) the only values you have access to are those stored in the table. I had thought that maybe you could mark the offending fields as Field without database representation, but sadly, the fields you may want will all be null - so best not to go down that route.
I took a slightly different approach to #trevor-j-fayas in that I used the BizFormItemEvents.Insert.Before event so that there is no trace of any log. It's a short hop from there to make use of an email template to make things look good. So my code looked as follows:
using CMS;
using CMS.DataEngine;
using CMS.EmailEngine;
using System;
[assembly: RegisterModule(typeof(FormGlobalEvents))]
public class FormGlobalEvents : Module
{
public FormGlobalEvents() : base("FormGlobalEvents")
{
}
protected override void OnInit()
{
CMS.OnlineForms.BizFormItemEvents.Insert.Before += Insert_Before;
}
private void Insert_Before(object sender, CMS.OnlineForms.BizFormItemEventArgs e)
{
var email = new EmailMessage();
email.From = e.Item.GetStringValue("ContactEmail", "null#foo.com");
email.Recipients = "no-reply#foo.com";
email.Subject = "Test from event handler (before save)";
email.PlainTextBody = "test" + DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString();
EmailSender.SendEmail(email);
e.Cancel();
}
}
To me, it seems cleaner to not insert the record in the first place than delete it, but obviously that autoresponder etc. will only kick in automatically if you do save the record, so the choice is yours and ultimately depends on your preference.

Answer 2

Well, there's a couple different options, but the easiest is to simply delete the record after it's inserted. Use the Global Event Hooks to capture the BizFormItemEvent insert after, if it's your form, then delete it. Below is for Kentico 10:
using CMS;
using CMS.DataEngine;
using CMS.Forums;
using CMS.Helpers;
using CMS.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Web;
// Registers the custom module into the system
[assembly: RegisterModule(typeof(CustomLoaderModule))]
public class CustomLoaderModule : Module
{
// Module class constructor, the system registers the module under the name "CustomForums"
public CustomLoaderModule()
: base("CustomLoaderModule")
{
}
// Contains initialization code that is executed when the application starts
protected override void OnInit()
{
base.OnInit();
CMS.OnlineForms.BizFormItemEvents.Insert.After += BizFormItem_Insert_After;
}
private void BizFormItem_Insert_After(object sender, CMS.OnlineForms.BizFormItemEventArgs e)
{
switch(e.Item.BizFormInfo.FormName)
{
case "YourFormNameHere":
e.Item.Delete();
break;
}
}
}
The other option would be to clone and modify the Online Form Web part to take the information, manually call the email and cancel the insert, but that's a lot of work when this is quicker.

Answer 3

Yes and no. The record is stored before the email notifications and autoresponders are sent out. Your best bet for this is to create a custom global event handler for the form submission(s) using the BizFormItemEvents.Insert.Before. This will call the event before the actual record is stored in the database. You can then cancel out of the event (which will not store the record) and send your email manually.
Handling global events
BizFormItemEvents Events