
Airform: Functional HTML forms for front-end developers - cjpatoilo
https://airform.io
======
cjpatoilo
What if you could use a service that gives you full control over the form, yet
doesn’t require you to use anything on your server? Airform gives you the
ability to create functional HTML forms without thinking about servers.

After 2 years and thousands of submissions, I am very happy to introduce
Airform to the world. It's available on
[https://airform.io](https://airform.io) effective immediately.

What's next?

Support for JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, Angular, and Angular.js

Help users with interactive F.A.Q. page

~~~
dcre
In Firefox 75.0b4 on Mac, the code in the example shows up all on one line. In
Chrome it looks right.

~~~
dhosek
Code is in one line in Safari as well.

~~~
mekster
I wonder why Safari has been deviating from Blink a lot lately or is Blink
moving too fast?

~~~
dhosek
Given that the problem also apparently happens with Firefox, perhaps the
latter?

~~~
mekster
I meant by that Blink forked out of webkit which is Safari's engine. Gecko is
a different code base.

------
nikisweeting
I don't understand, are they just selling completely vanilla HTML forms?
What's the product here?

> Airform turns complex HTML forms into simple calls.

a.k.a a POST request? a.k.a how all forms already work today... it's already
language agnostic.

~~~
movedx
I believe they're providing the back end infrastructure that receives that
processing that POST request. Maybe they store it in some DB and you can
retrieve the data later on via an API call or something?

~~~
capableweb
Seems the form's action goes to their backend and you also include your email
in that url, so seems to be a "form submission > email" service.

Would look like this:

<form
action="[https://airform.io/your@email.com"](https://airform.io/your@email.com")
method="post">

    
    
      <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Enter your name">
    
      <textarea name="message" placeholder="Enter your message"></textarea>
    
      <button>Send</button>
    

</form>

~~~
smaddox
Ahhh. In that case, Google also has a version of this that writes to Google
sheets:
[https://www.google.com/forms/about/](https://www.google.com/forms/about/)

Our HR and accounting ppl use it regularly.

~~~
movedx
I'd prefer this Google option my self.

------
aliswe
Some mpre constructive feedback people? Sure the page lacks some examples but
many comments here are deeply disappointing.

Remember doing an OSS project is extremely taxing, dealing with naysayers at
all stages of development, impostor syndrome, lack of confidence and just
general fatigue.

Please show some respect and show the creators, tinkerers and developers of HN
some appreciation and encouragement.

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cdcarter
The page writes that its an open source solution, but it looks like the github
repo only contains the frontend code, not the backend? I'd love to be proven
wrong here, cause this looks like a useful service if I can run it on my own
VM.

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spking
Looks nice. A few years back my friend and I built formbucket.com to solve the
same problem, and we quickly found out that keeping a lid on spam is a big
challenge. How are you planning to deal with that?

~~~
ivanche
What problem is being solved here, exactly?

~~~
spking
You are developing a static site and don't have a backend to process form
submissions. A hosted endpoint solves that problem.

~~~
threentaway
Is a Lambda/Cloud Function/etc. really so complicated?

~~~
spiderfarmer
While you can probably also find people like car mechanics that wonder why
people think changing a V-belt is so complicated, this type of arrogance seems
to be more prevalent among programmers.

------
Zaheer
Levels.fyi still relies on Google Form for submissions. It's just as simple
and requires no backend. It also nicely populates a Google Sheet. Airform
looks great but the Google Sheet functionality was essential for us. There's a
good tutorial here: [https://blog.webjeda.com/google-form-
customize/](https://blog.webjeda.com/google-form-customize/)

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Do you work at levels.fyi? Maybe you can explain why those salary numbers
don't match any company I've ever worked for. :P

~~~
Zaheer
Yes I'm a co-founder. Can you email me the company at hello <at> levels <dot>
fyi? FWIW we take accuracy very seriously. We just released an email list for
receiving verified salaries:
[https://www.levels.fyi/verified/](https://www.levels.fyi/verified/)

------
jordanlev
I've been using this service for years:
[https://formspree.io/](https://formspree.io/) \-- they do a decent job of
preventing spam as well.

------
doublerabbit
Are we really starting to sell forms as a service? Another data grab service.

------
veeralpatel979
Netlify Forms is another alternative:

[https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/](https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/)

[https://docs.netlify.com/forms/setup/](https://docs.netlify.com/forms/setup/)

~~~
earthboundkid
I’ve been happy with it. They have spam filtering which mostly works.

~~~
veeralpatel979
Yes I believe they use Akismet:

[https://akismet.com/](https://akismet.com/)

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mike_d
This is about 2 days away from being shut down as a spam relay.

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pupppet
Nice idea, but I see no pricing. How will you support the service?

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CerebralCerb
It parses a x-www-form-urlencoded POST call and sends it to an E-mail? Or am I
completely wrong about what it does?

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nielsbot
Building a registration form for our business and was surprised to discover
there's an entire industry (maybe?) of Form Submission as a Service providers.
(Personally, I'm trying out formspree.io--which accepts AJAX submissions
and/or file uploads)

~~~
chrsstrm
It takes about 20 min and minimal technical abilities to set up a Google App
Script attached to a Sheet which can accept a POST and do literally anything
with the submitted data. Obvious is to save it to the Sheet but you can also
tap into Gmail and email results anywhere you like. Works with any free Gmail
account as well as GSuite accounts. Search for Google App Script doPost -
which is a built-in event handler that will accept POSTs once you publish as a
web app and grant the proper permissions. Use the published URL as your form's
action handler. All for free.

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juliend2
I see no spam mitigation measure (captcha, honeypot). Am I missing something?

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chrisweekly
What happens to the submitted form data?

~~~
choward
Great question. You will never know what is done with the data if you're using
servers you don't control. That's why I thought the intro was fake at first.
That's the literal exact opposite of what I want. I only clicked there link
because it said "functional". I'm a little disappointed.

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eteos
You are working with sensative data but there is no privacy statement.

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Myce
Is this somekind of test to spam HN submissions?

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dcorwin
Is this a joke?

