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# Contact form classes

There are two contact-form classes included in django-contact-form; one provides all the infrastructure for a contact form, and will usually be the base class for subclasses which want to extend or modify functionality. The other is a subclass which adds spam filtering to the contact form.

## The base contact form class

class django_contact_form.forms.ContactForm(*args, data=None, files=None, request=None, recipient_list=None, **kwargs)

  The base contact form class from which all contact form classes should inherit.

  If you don’t need any customization, you can use this form to provide basic contact-form functionality; it will collect name, email address and message.

  The `ContactFormView` included in this application knows how to work with this form and can handle many types of subclasses as well (see below for a discussion of the important points), so in many cases it will be all that you need. If you’d like to use this form or a subclass of it from one of your own views, here’s how:

  1. When you instantiate the form, pass the current `HttpRequest` object as the keyword argument `request`; this is used internally by the base implementation, and also made available so that subclasses can add functionality which relies on inspecting the request (such as spam filtering).

  2. To send the message, call the form’s `save()` method, which accepts the keyword argument `fail_silently` and defaults it to `False`. This argument is passed directly to Django’s `send_mail()` function, and allows you to suppress or raise exceptions as needed for debugging. The `save()` method has no return value.

  Other than that, treat it like any other form; validity checks and validated data are handled normally, through the `is_valid()` method and the `cleaned_data` dictionary.

  Under the hood, this form uses a somewhat abstracted interface in order to make it easier to subclass and add functionality.

  ### Customizing behavior in subclasses

  The following attributes play a role in determining behavior, and any of them can be implemented as an attribute or as a method (for example, if you wish to have `from_email` be dynamic, you can implement a method named `from_email()` instead of setting the attribute `from_email`).

  from_email

    The email address (`str`) to use in the `From:` header of the message. By default, this is the value of the Django setting ``DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL`.

  recipient_list

    A `list` of recipients for the message. By default, this is the email addresses specified in the Django setting `MANAGERS`.

  subject_template_name

    A `str`, the name of the template to use when rendering the subject line of the message. By default, this is `"django_contact_form/contact_form_subject.txt"`.

  template_name

    A `str`, the name of the template to use when rendering the body of the message. By default, this is `"django_contact_form/contact_form.txt"`.

  And two methods are involved in producing the contents of the message to send:

  message() → str

    Return the body of the message to send. By default, this is accomplished by rendering the template name specified in `template_name`.

  subject() → str

    Return the subject line of the message to send. By default, this is accomplished by rendering the template name specified in `subject_template_name`.

    Warning

    Subject must be a single line

    The subject of an email is sent in a header (named `Subject:`). Because email uses newlines as a separator between headers, newlines in the subject can cause it to be interpreted as multiple headers; this is the header injection attack. To prevent this, `subject()` will always force the subject to a single line of text, stripping all newline characters. If you override `subject()`, be sure to either do this manually, or use `super` to call the parent implementation.

  Finally, the message itself is generated by the following two methods:

  get_message_dict() → dict

    Generate the parts of the message and return them in a dictionary suitable for passing as keyword arguments to Django’s `send_mail()`.

    By default, this method will collect and return `from_email`, `recipient_list`, `message()` and `subject()`. Overriding this allows essentially unlimited customization of how the message is generated. Note that for compatibility, implementations which override this should support callables for the values of `from_email` and `recipient_list`.

  get_message_context() → dict

    Return the context used to render the templates for the email subject and body.

    The default context will be a `RequestContext` (using the current HTTP request, so user information is available), plus the contents of the form’s `cleaned_data` dictionary, and one additional variable:

    `site`

      If `django.contrib.sites` is installed, the currently-active `Site` object. Otherwise, a `RequestSite` object generated from the request.

  ### Other attributes/methods

  Meanwhile, the following attributes/methods generally should not be overridden; doing so may interfere with functionality, may not accomplish what you want, and generally any desired customization can be accomplished in a more straightforward way through overriding one of the attributes/methods listed above.

  request

    The `HttpRequest` object representing the current request. This is set automatically in `__init__()`, and is used both to generate a `RequestContext` for the templates and to allow subclasses to engage in request-specific behavior.

  save(fail_silently=False)

    If the form has data and is valid, construct and send the email.

    By default, this is done by obtaining the parts of the email from `get_message_dict()` and passing the result to Django’s `send_mail()` function.

  Note that subclasses which override `__init__` or `save()` need to accept `*args` and `**kwargs`, and pass them via `super()`, in order to preserve behavior (each of those methods accepts at least one additional argument, and this application expects and requires them to do so).

## The spam-filtering contact form class

class django_contact_form.forms.AkismetContactForm(*args, data=None, files=None, request=None, recipient_list=None, **kwargs)

  A subclass of `ContactForm` which adds spam filtering, via the Akismet spam-detection service.

  Use of this class requires you to provide configuration for the Akismet web service. You’ll need to obtain an Akismet API key, and you’ll need to associate it with the site you’ll use the contact form on. You can do this at <https://akismet.com/>. Once you have, put your Akismet API key in the environment variable `PYTHON_AKISMET_API_KEY`, and the URL it’s associated with in the environment variable `PYTHON_AKISMET_BLOG_URL`.

  You will also need the Python Akismet module to communicate with the Akismet web service. You can install it manually (if you do, install at least version 24.5.0), or `django-contact-form` can install it automatically for you if you tell `pip` to install `"django-contact-form[akismet]"`.

  Once you have an Akismet API key and URL configured, and the `akismet` module installed, you can drop in `AkismetContactForm` anywhere you would have used `ContactForm`. A URLconf is also provided in django-contact-form, at `django_contact_form.akismet_urls`, which will set up `AkismetContactForm` for you in place of the base contact form class.

  If you want to customize the spam-filtering behavior, there are two methods you can override:

  get_akismet_check_arguments() → dict

    Return the arguments which will be passed to the Akismet spam check.

    If your form contains additional fields which need to have their contents passed to Akismet, override this to ensure those arguments are correctly set.

  get_akismet_client() → akismet.SyncClient

    Obtain and return an Akismet API client.

    By default, this will create a single API client instance and keep it resident in memory for the life of the Python process.

    If you need to customize the Akismet client creation (for example, to pass custom arguments to the Akismet API client), override this method.

    Note: Only synchronous Akismet clients (`akismet.SyncClient`) are supported here; async clients (`akismet.AsyncClient`) are not.