Note: this feature has been added in Liferay Portal 4.3

Introduction #

The web forms portlet is a tool that allows a web administrator to define a form to be published in the website. Users visiting the website can then fill the form which is then sent to a configured email address or saved (to file or to database).

Attached are two screenshots to see how the portlet looks like in view and edit configuration modes.

Features #

• The title and introductory description of the form shown to the users are configurable
• The email address and subject of the email is also configurable per form
• It is possible to have as many different forms per website and page as desired (Instanceable portlet)
• Three types of fields: text, text box and select box
• Save to database
• Export to CSV file

Limitations and future work #

Following is a list of known limitations that might be solved in the future:

• "Export do file" sections is seen only after someone fills that form.
• A fixed number of max fields must be configured at deployment time (in portlet.xml). This should be expanded so that there is no max. limit and new fields can be added through the UI
• Three types of fields: text, text box and select box
• Not internationalizable: it's not possible to have the form title, form description and field labels in several languages
• (at least in 5.2.3) Mandatory Fields should not contain spaces in their label

Other improvements that might be done are:

• Support more field types
• Show statistics about the answers (requires previous feature)
• Email to multiple contacts (comma or colon-separated list)

References #

• http://support.liferay.com/browse/LEP-2558