Flash-based forms all stopped working; URLDecode problem?

**symphy** · 08-Jan-2009, 05:15 AM

Hello FormMail fans --

I have a problem. All my HTML/PHP FormMail forms still work fine. But a week or so ago, all my client Flash-based FormMail forms stopped functioning. My hosting company suspects it may have been the side effect of a server upgrade, since I haven't made any changes myself, but I desperately need to find a workaround.

What happens now is that my Flash-based forms are sending gibberish that isn't properly decoded by FormMail. I'll get error messages instead, like this:

Code:

The following error occurred in FormMail :
no_valid_recipients
**********
Error=The form has an internal error - no valid recipients were specified. 
 
email: john%40johntester%2Ecom
realname: John Tester
good%5Furl: 'http%3A%2F%2Ftestsite%2Ecom%2Fending%2Ehtm'
message: 'Why isn%27t this working%3F'

The "no valid recipients" problem stems from the URLdecoding problem (i.e., it's sending the recipients field "broken" as well.)

When I track down the actual server request, it looks something like this:

Code:

 http://testsite.com/formmail.php?realname=I+am+a+form&subject=
Testing+Contact+Form&recipients=johnmangletesting%252Ecom
&good%255Furl=http%253A%252F%...

For some reason, FormMail has stopped being able to translate the ASCII in the URLdecode process, due apparently to some server setting (I'm guessing) ?

Has anyone else run into this, is there any way around it, and/or is there another way of integrating FormMail and Flash that I should try? Right now I'm using the...

Code:

 getURL("http://www.testing.com/formmail.php", "lower", "GET");

...method, which has always worked before!!

Help?

**russellr** · 08-Jan-2009, 06:17 AM

Hi,

We recently learned that PHP version 5.2.0 and above has a new feature called "filter extensions".

Since you've had a server upgrade it sounds likely that these have been included and switched on.

One of the things they do is replace all input with "HTML Entities" - for example, . becomes %2E and / becomes %2F

Check your php.ini file for "filter." and disable this feature.

**symphy** · 08-Jan-2009, 06:58 AM

Excellent (and fast) suggestion! I bet that's it! My hosting company is wary about custom php.ini files, though.

I was able to get around the problem by changing my GetURLs to LoadVariables, and forms come through that way again. But now there's two little funky differences with how the mail comes through.

1) I'm getting other Flash variables passed along for the ride. Can I exclude them somehow? Examples in bold:

Code:

email: john@test.com
realname: John Test
_childCounter: 1
focus_mc: _level0.form.depthChild0
phonenumber: 517-555-7600
cityandstate: East Lansing, MI

2) If you submit a form a SECOND time, it attaches what I'm assuming is the FormMail "output" code to the email:

Code:

email: john@Test.com
realname: Another Test holy crap
message: Test again!
_childCounter: 1
focus_mc: _level0.form.depthChild0
phonenumber: 517-222-2222
cityandstate: City and State
<!DOCTYPE_html_PUBLIC_"-//W3C//DTD_XHTML_1_0_Transitional//EN"_"http://www_w3_org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional_dtd">
<html_xmlns: 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'> <head> <meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=utf-8' /> <title>Cravings Popcorn</title> </head> <body> Success! </body> </html>

Weird, huh?

Any suggestions?

Or should I just beg my hosting company to let me change the php.ini file and try the old way once more?

**russellr** · 08-Jan-2009, 07:54 AM

Hi,

For #1, check out mail_options Exclude.

For #2: no idea. But if you want me to investigate, please subscribe for support.

**symphy** · 08-Jan-2009, 08:02 AM

You know, I just might do that. (Buying a month or so of support.) I feel like I'm only scratching the surface on how I can use FormMail, and I've really grown to depend on it.

Thanks again for all your speedy help so far! (That php.ini issue is very good to know, because I bet it will impact other computational forms I have as well.)