Add Contact Form to Hartl Tutorial

I am learning Rails by following the Hartl tutorial and making my own adjustments to it. Now I would like to expand on it and add a contact form that sends an email message. This is not included in the tutorial, but at the end of Chapter 10 we learned how to use the mailer method and we configured SendGrid on Heroku.

I already have a view set up on routes and I think it will require the following additional steps:

1) Terminal. rails creates a ContactForm mailbox

2) In app / mailers / contactform.rb:

def send_contactform_email(visitor)
  @visitor = visitor
  mail( :to => myemail@example.com, :from => visitor.email, :subject => 'Contact form' )
end

      

        
        
        
      

    

3) app / views / contactform_mailer / (mailing view), for example:

<h1>Website contact form</h1>
<p>On <$= ... %> <%= "#{@visitor.name} (#{@visitor.email} sent the following message:" %></p>
<p><%= @visitor.message %></p>

      

        
        
        
      

    

4) app \ controllers \ static_pages_controller (or other location?)

  # Sends contact form email.
  def send_contact_form_email
    ContactFormMailer.send_contactform_email(visitor).deliver_now
    redirect_to contact_path, notice: 'Message sent'
  end

      

        
        
        
      

    

5) app \ views \ static_pages \ contact.html.erb (I'm not sure about the first line, should I also do something in route.rb? My guess is the first line, tell me to execute the method in step 4, which won't work as it does now.)

<%= form_for(:static_pages, url: contactform_path) do |f| %>
  <i class="pt-row-icon glyphicon glyphicon-user"></i> <%= f.label :name %>
  <%= f.text_field :name, placeholder: 'Name', class: 'form-control' %>

  <i class="pt-row-icon glyphicon glyphicon-envelope"></i> <%= f.label :email %>
  <%= f.email_field :email, placeholder: 'Email', class: 'form-control' %>

  <i class="pt-row-icon glyphicon glyphicon-envelope"></i> <%= f.label :message %>
  <%= f.text_area :message, placeholder: 'Your message…', class: 'form-control' %>

  <%= f.submit "Send", class: "btn btn-primary" %>
<% end %>

      

        
        
        
      

    

I don't think this is 100% correct, especially the bold sections. What are your thoughts?

UPDATE VERSION 2: I tried to do updates as suggested by Ven and there is now the code below. The idea, as I understand it, is that

• the controller in def contact
  
  sets the @message variable.
• form_for knows to fill this variable with [: message] parameters.
• the controller takes values ​​from form_for and passes them to the mailer.
• the mailer uses the mailer view to compose the message to send.
• the sender sends it back to the controller, which sends the message.

1) Application / controllers / static_pages_controller.rb

class StaticPagesController < ApplicationController
before_action :valid_email?, only: [:send_message_email]

  # Shows the contact form page
  def contact
    @message = message(message_params)
  end

  # Sends the message.
  def send_message_email
    @message = message(message_params)
    if @message.valid?
      MessageMailer.new_message(@message).deliver_now
      redirect_to contact_path, notice: "Your messages has been sent."
    else
      flash[:alert] = "An error occurred while delivering this message."
      render :new
    end
  end    

  private

    def message_params
      params.require(:message).require(:name, :email, :content)
    end

    def valid_email?(email)
      VALID_EMAIL_REGEX = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-]+(\.[a-z\d\-]+)*\.[a-z]+\z/i
      email.present? && (email =~ VALID_EMAIL_REGEX)
    end
end

      

        
        
        
      

    

2) Contact form in app \ views \ static_pages \ contact.html.erb:

<%= form_for(message: params[:message], url: contact_path) do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :name %> <%= f.text_field :name, placeholder: 'Name', class: 'form-control' %>
  <%= f.label :email %> <%= f.email_field :email, placeholder: 'Email', class: 'form-control' %>
  <%= f.label :content %> <%= f.text_area :content, placeholder: 'Your message…', class: 'form-control' %>
  <%= f.submit "Send", class: "btn btn-primary" %>
<% end %>

      

        
        
        
      

    

3) Routes.rb

  get 'contact'           => 'static_pages#contact',  as: 'contact'
  post 'contact'          => 'static_pages#send_message_email'

      

        
        
        
      

    

4) App / views / message_mailer.text.erb (and html.erb)

<%= @message[:name] %> <%= @message[:email] %> wrote:
<%= @message[:content] %>

      

        
        
        
      

    

5) App / mailers / message_mailer.rb

class MessageMailer < ApplicationMailer
  default to: "myemail@example.com>"

  def new_message(message)
    @message = message
    mail to: "myemail@example.com"
    mail from: @message[:email]
    mail subject: "Message from #{message[:name]}"
  end
end

      

        
        
        
      

    

Now, when I try to visit the contact form on the server, I get an error message: param is missing or the value is empty: message

. It refers to a string params.require(:message).require(:name, :email, :content)

. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Changing it to params.require(:message).permit(:name, :email, :content)

doesn't matter.