This article will show you how to use server-side validation to validate form fields. This will allow you to call the endpoint once prior to submission and once before your workflow begins. You can use a Custom URL or a Hosted API to use in validation.
An example use case could be for validating an address within your desired state or postcode.
Set Up Validation
Sign in to your site
Navigate to the Forms
Select the form you want to validate
On the Summary tab, scroll down to Validation
Select Custom URL or Hosted API and add a custom URL or a hosted API endpoint to the form
Custom URL
URL: Provide the URL for the specific API endpoint that you want the form to validate against
Secret: Select an existing secret from the drop-down or add a new one
Hosted API
Hosted API: Select a previously created Hosted API from the list
Route: Choose an available route for the Hosted API
Secret: Select an existing secret from the drop-down or add a new one
Click Save
Example Validation
For an example of Server Side Validation check out our GitHub.
Example Payload
{"formsAppId": 1,"formId": 1,"externalId": "external identifier","secret": "ssshhh","submissionId": "85fad0a4-b778-4aea-a6e7-671d84d58156","submissionTimestamp": "2018-01-01T00:00:00.000Z","jobId": "29e8138d-b28c-49da-b357-f4974adbf0a6","previousFormSubmissionApprovalId": "04dc6796-f593-47a6-ac21-5e00473d86a1","submission": {"First_Name": "Jane","Last_Name": "Smith"},"ipAddress": "86.124.75.76","keyId": "","user": {"userId": "81798353-7c7a-481b-89f2-8c5fb83209ca","providerType": "Google","providerUserId": "234891839120312839123","username": "[email protected]","email": "[email protected]","firstName": "Jane","lastName": "Smith","fullName": "Jane Smith","picture": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/AATXAJyQ6F_frDWNQguRuVrRmKKs22PYkXDTQlzgDRjp=s96-c"},"device": {"type": "BROWSER","appCodeName": "Mozilla","appName": "Netscape","appVersion": "5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/105.0.0.0 Safari/537.36","cookieEnabled": true,"hardwareConcurrency": 12,"language": "en-GB","maxTouchPoints": 0,"platform": "MacIntel","userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/105.0.0.0 Safari/537.36","vendor": "Google Inc.","webdriver": false}}Note: The first call prior to submission will not include the submission ID, Submission timestamp, secret, IP address, and device information.
Validation Fails
If the validation fails on the first call prior to the submission, the user will be shown a failure modal. This can be used to include an informative error message explaining why the form failed the validation. For example, "The address you are using is not within the expected Postcode."
If the validation fails on the second call prior to the workflow then an email will be sent to the notification email address configured for the app that the form is being submitted from.
If the validation succeeds the form will be submitted as normal.