This is How to Add Custom Calculations to Your Contact Form 7 Notification Emails
As a WordPress website owner, you know the importance of having a well-designed contact form that provides a seamless user experience for your visitors. One of the popular contact form plugins used by millions of WordPress users is Contact Form 7 (CF7). While CF7 offers a range of features, sometimes you may need to go beyond its basic capabilities to meet your specific requirements.
In this blog post, we'll explore a common scenario where you might want to add custom calculations to your CF7 notification emails. Perhaps you run an ecommerce business and need to display the total cost of a customer's order in the email. Or maybe you offer a service where customers need to input certain parameters, and you want to show the calculated value based on their inputs.
Whatever the case may be, we'll guide you through the process of implementing custom calculations in your CF7 notification emails without relying on any dirty hacks. By the end of this article, you'll have a clean and efficient solution that will impress your users and streamline your business workflows.
Understand the Problem: Why the "Dirty" Fix Isn't the Best Approach
You mentioned that you've tried a "dirty" fix by adding a hidden field in the form and using JavaScript or another script to set its value. While this might work as a temporary solution, it's not the most optimal approach for a few reasons:
-
Lack of Flexibility: Hardcoding the calculation logic into a hidden field limits your ability to modify or expand the functionality in the future. If you need to change the calculation formula or add more variables, you'll have to update the script accordingly.
-
Potential Security Risks: Relying on client-side scripts to handle sensitive data, such as order totals or pricing information, can expose your website to potential security vulnerabilities. Malicious users could potentially manipulate the hidden field or the client-side script to alter the calculated values.
-
Maintainability Issues: The "dirty" fix can make your code harder to understand and maintain, especially as your website grows more complex. It's generally better to separate the calculation logic from the form handling and notification email generation.
The Right Way to Add Custom Calculations to CF7 Notification Emails
Instead of the "dirty" fix, we'll explore a more robust and maintainable approach to adding custom calculations to your CF7 notification emails. This method involves using the built-in hooks and functionality provided by the CF7 plugin, as well as some additional PHP code.
Step 1: Create Custom Fields for the Calculation Variables
Start by creating custom fields in your CF7 form that will hold the variables needed for your calculation. For example, if you're calculating the total cost of an order, you might have fields for the item price, quantity, and any applicable taxes or fees.
In your CF7 form, add these custom fields using the appropriate tags, such as [text your-price]
and [number your-quantity]
. Make sure to give them meaningful names that describe their purpose.
Step 2: Retrieve the Form Data in Your Notification Email
When a user submits the CF7 form, the plugin will generate a notification email. You can hook into this process and access the form data to perform your custom calculation.
In your theme's functions.php
file or in a custom plugin, add the following code:
add_filter('wpcf7_mail_components', 'add_custom_calculation_to_cf7_email', 10, 3);
function add_custom_calculation_to_cf7_email($components, $form, $result)
{
// Get the form data
$form_data = $result->get_posted_data();
// Perform the custom calculation
$total_cost = $form_data['your-price'] * $form_data['your-quantity'];
// Add the calculated value to the email body
$components['body'] .= "\nTotal Cost: $" . number_format($total_cost, 2);
return $components;
}
In this example, we're hooking into the wpcf7_mail_components
filter, which allows us to modify the email components (subject, body, attachments, etc.) before they are sent.
Inside the add_custom_calculation_to_cf7_email
function, we:
- Retrieve the form data using
$result->get_posted_data()
.
- Perform the custom calculation (in this case, multiplying the price and quantity).
- Append the calculated value to the email body.
- Return the modified email components.
This approach keeps the calculation logic separate from the form handling, making it easier to maintain and update in the future.
Step 3: Customize the Appearance of the Calculated Value in the Email
By default, the calculated value will be appended to the email body as plain text. However, you may want to format it in a more visually appealing way, such as using bold or italic formatting, or even adding a table or other HTML structures.
To do this, you can further modify the $components['body']
variable in the add_custom_calculation_to_cf7_email
function. For example:
$components['body'] .= "\n\n<strong>Total Cost:</strong> $" . number_format($total_cost, 2);
This will display the total cost in a bold format within the email body.
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Step 4: Test and Validate the Custom Calculation
Before putting your changes into production, be sure to thoroughly test the custom calculation to ensure it's working as expected. Submit the CF7 form with various input values and verify that the notification email contains the correct calculated amount.
You can also consider adding error handling and validation to your code, such as checking for empty or invalid input values, and providing appropriate error messages or default values.
Bonus Tip: Enhance the User Experience with Instant Calculations
To provide an even better user experience, you can consider implementing instant calculations on the front-end of your website. This means that as the user fills out the form, the calculated value is immediately displayed, without waiting for the form submission.
You can achieve this by using JavaScript to listen for changes in the form fields, perform the calculation, and update the displayed value in real-time. This can be particularly useful for complex forms with multiple variables or when you want to give users immediate feedback on the estimated cost or value of their request.
Remember to keep the front-end calculation logic in sync with the server-side calculation used in the notification email to ensure consistency and accuracy.
Conclusion
In this blog post, we've explored a clean and efficient way to add custom calculations to your Contact Form 7 notification emails, without relying on the "dirty" fix of using hidden fields and client-side scripts.
By leveraging the built-in hooks and functionality provided by the CF7 plugin, you can seamlessly integrate your custom calculation logic into the email generation process. This approach ensures that your code is more maintainable, secure, and flexible, allowing you to easily update or expand the functionality in the future.
Remember, the key to building a great user experience is to provide clear and accurate information to your customers. By implementing custom calculations in your CF7 notification emails, you can take your contact forms to the next level and demonstrate your attention to detail and commitment to your users' needs.
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