Building Dash Forms

Background

Forms are almost inevitable in the majority of websites and mobile apps today. Whether it is a waitlist, a survey, a newsletter, a bug report, or a job application project, you will need a form to collect this data. The typical approach will be to set up a database of some sort, write code to insert data, and more code to export it later. About data export, depending on the database you use, this can be as simple as writing code to export as in the case of a relational database, or just outright frustrating as in the case in something like Cloud Firestore by Firebase. If you want to receive email notifications for each submission, the story is the same. Unless you have a script to do all these tasks each time, the process is mundane and tedious.

The Research

Could there be a way, a service in fact, that you could simply send your data to for secure storage, viewing, and eventually exporting? The search for such a tool was underway and indeed, there were such services. They allowed you to simply send a post request to a generated url along with the data, and easily view your form submissions later. Okay so why does this project exist then? Well, it turns out that these services were limiting in several ways. You can only submit a name, an email and a message and that's about it. Now let's be real, not all forms are as simple as that. What if your form required extra fields such as location or phone number? Perhaps you could upgrade your plan to achieve that? Want to export your data? Yeah, same story. You cannot create more than one project, and you have a very small limit with respect to the number of submissions your form can receive.

Our Solution

Dash Forms builds on the pros of these services, and adds some essential functionalities. You can customize each form to fit a different schema requirement per project. Want to export your data for further processing or analysis? Easy, find the export button and click click. Want to send emails on each form submission? Done, turn it on when creating the form, or later in the project settings. Want information on which country your users have submitted forms from? Copy that. Dash Forms allows you to create any number of projects/forms, and receive any number of submissions at any time.