When using caching mechanisms with Formie, it's worth taking note of some caveats to ensure things work correctly.
If you are using the {% cache %} Twig tag in your templates, any JavaScript and CSS will be automatically cached alongside the HTML, and re-registered on subsequent page loads. There's nothing you need to do!
This is new behaviour in Craft 4 and later. If you're on Craft 3 (and Formie v1), please refer to those docs.
Whilst the form will now be cached, this will cause issues with Formie's CSRF token, which is also cached. This needs to be unique per-request, so we need a method of being able to update this. Similarly, some captchas that rely on the output for the form will fail. Notably the JavaScript captcha and the Duplicate captcha, as their content will be cached.
Continue reading the next section for a more detailed explanation and how to handle refreshing this information dynamically.
It's quite commonplace to implement full-page static caching on sites. For Craft, we highly recommend the Blitz (opens new window) plugin, but you can use any number of methods to statically cache your pages.
However, caching the form for every visitor poses an issue for Formie's CSRF tokens and captchas used to verify the integrity of form submissions and spam submissions. Indeed, this problem will be the same for any form on your site. To get around this, you'll need to implement a way to refresh these tokens in your forms through JavaScript.
Fortunately, Formie makes it easy to refresh this content with JavaScript.
{% set form = craft.formie.forms.handle('contactForm').one() %}
{{ craft.formie.renderForm(form) }}
{% js %}
// Wait until Formie has been loaded and initialized
document.addEventListener('onFormieInit', (event) => {
// Fetch the Form Factory once it's been loaded
let Formie = event.detail.formie;
// Refresh the necessary bits that are statically cached (CSRF inputs, captchas, etc)
Formie.refreshForCache('{{ form.formId }}');
});
{% endjs %}
Every time you call craft.formie.renderForm() you should also include this script, so that it will work for rendering multiple forms on a page.
Here, we've combined rendering the form as we normally would, with some extra JavaScript. While this entire code will be cached and served exactly the same to each visitor, the JavaScript will be executed when the page is loaded. The Formie.refreshForCache() function makes a GET call to our actions/formie/forms/refresh-tokens controller action, which returns a collection of useful token information.
In summary, this function will:
With that in place, your forms are ready for static caching!
While we recommend using our Formie.refreshForCache function, you're more than welcome to roll your own solution. The below is a guide for what you can do.
{% set form = craft.formie.forms.handle('contactForm').one() %}
{{ craft.formie.renderForm(form) }}
{# Ensure we load polyfills for older browsers that don't support `fetch()` #}
<script src="https://cdn.polyfill.io/v2/polyfill.js?features=fetch,Promise"></script>
<script>
// Wait until the DOM is ready
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => {
// Fetch the form we want to deal with
let $form = document.querySelector('#{{ form.formId }}');
// Find the CSRF token hidden input, so we can replace it
let $csrfInput = $form.querySelector('input[name="CRAFT_CSRF_TOKEN"]');
// Fetch the new token for the form and replace the CSRF input with our new one
fetch('/actions/formie/forms/refresh-tokens?form={{ form.handle }}')
.then(result => { return result.json(); })
.then(result => {
$csrfInput.outerHTML = result.csrf.input;
// Find the JavaScript captcha hidden input, so we can update it
if (result.captchas && result.captchas.javascript) {
// JavaScript captcha
let jsCaptcha = result.captchas.javascript;
$form.querySelector('input[name="' + jsCaptcha.sessionKey + '"]').value = jsCaptcha.value;
}
// Find the Duplicate captcha hidden input, so we can update it
if (result.captchas && result.captchas.duplicate) {
// Duplicate captcha
let duplicateCaptcha = result.captchas.duplicate;
$form.querySelector('input[name="' + duplicateCaptcha.sessionKey + '"]').value = duplicateCaptcha.value;
}
// Update the form's hash (if using Formie's themed JS)
if ($form.form && $form.form.formTheme) {
$form.form.formTheme.updateFormHash();
}
});
});
</script>