Create a contact web form in Visual Studio

Sometimes, you might not want to work with the editor at all. Dragging and dropping fields is easy, but if you want to generate forms dynamically based on data from other systems - you can use our provisioning API for public web forms that allows creation of forms in Visual Studio with the help of our NuGet package.

In this example, you’ll see how easy it is to create a public web form in the Visual Studio, and you can follow the same path to create and provision your own form. This method might be very beneficial, if you want to have the same form available in multiple accounts and want to provision them quickly and efficiently.

Create application and install NuGet package
Adjust the code
Run the app

Create application and install NuGet package

Run the Visual Studio. In the Visual Studio, create a new Project and select Console App (.NET Core):

Create new Console App (.NET Core)

In the newly created project, open Tools, find NuGet Package Manager and select Manage NuGet Packages for Solution…

Open the Browse tab, search for ‘plumsail’, and install Plumsail.Forms.Public package:

Plumsail.Forms.Provision package

Adjust the code

Once the package and its dependencies have installed, go to Program.cs and replace all the code there with the following:

using Plumsail.Forms.Public;
using Plumsail.Forms.Public.Fields;
using Plumsail.Forms.Public.Controls;
using System;

namespace NetCoreWebForms
{
    class Program
    {
        static async System.Threading.Tasks.Task Main(string[] args)
        {
            var formName = "Contact Form";
            Console.WriteLine("Creating a " + formName);

            var login = "mymail@mail.com";
            var password = "admin1";

            var client = new FormsClient(login, password);

            var form = client.NewForm();
            form.SavePosts = true;
            form.NotifyOwner = false;
            form.Enabled = true;

            form.Layout.Css = "";
            form.Layout.JavaScript = "";
            form.Layout.Theme = new Theme(PredefinedThemes.);

            var grid = new Grid(
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new Text("FormTitleControl")
                    {
                        Content = "<h1>Contact us</h1>",
                        Class = "text-control-class"
                    }, width: 12)
                ),
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new SingleLineTextField("Name")
                    {
                        Title = "Name",
                        ControlHint = "John Wick",
                        Orientation = Orientation.Vertical
                    }, width: 6),
                    new GridCell(new SingleLineTextField("Email")
                    {
                        Title = "Email",
                        ControlHint = "jwick@hotmail.com",
                        Required = true,
                        Orientation = Orientation.Vertical
                    }, width: 6)
                ),
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new DateField("Date")
                    {
                        Title = "Date",
                        ControlHint = "Today's date",
                        Orientation = Orientation.Vertical
                    }, width: 12)
                ),
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new SingleLineTextField("Subject")
                    {
                        Title = "Subject",
                        ControlHint = "What issue are you facing?",
                        Required = true,
                        Orientation = Orientation.Vertical
                    }, width: 12)
                ),
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new MultiLineTextField("Description")
                    {
                        Title = "Description",
                        ControlHint = "What details can you provide about it?",
                        Required = true,
                        Orientation = Orientation.Vertical
                    }, width: 12)
                ),
                new GridRow(
                    new GridCell(new Submit("Submit1")
                    {
                        Width = 300
                    }, width: 6)
                )
            );
            form.Layout.PC = grid;
            try
            {
                await form.Save();
                Console.WriteLine(form.Name + " saved successfully!");
            }
            catch (InvalidLoginException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Authorization failed!");
            }
            catch (BadRequestException ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

Run the app

After saving the file, run the app. Congratulations, you’ve successfully created and provisioned your first form! Check the result in your account’s forms section:

Copy link to form

It should look like this:

Final form

The example shown in this article is very basic. To learn more about various methods available check out this provisioning article.