1. Documentation
  3. Forms
  5. Best practices
Open Specter
  • Introduction
  • Quickstart
  • Authentication
  • Errors
  • Rate limits
  • Best practices
  • Overview
  • Best practices
  • Create a key
  • Read and write
  • Overview
  • Best practices
  • Hosted page
  • Submit from your code
  • Drafts, files and corrections

Best practices

Collecting answers with forms that people finish.

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Overview< PreviousHosted pageNext >
  • Start with the hosted page. It already handles required answers, uploads, saving and resuming, signatures and the confirmation. Build your own front end only when the form must live inside your site's design.
  • Make the form from the board. Its questions then map one-to-one onto the board's columns, choices offer the column's own options, and every submission lands as a clean row.
  • Read the questions at run time. Load GET /v1/public/forms/<slug> rather than hard-coding field ids and options, so edits to the form never break your page.
  • Use drafts for long forms. Anything with documents or more than a few minutes of typing should save as it goes — drafts validate nothing until they are filed.
  • Follow postSubmit. After a submit, show the thank-you or go to redirectUrl as the form's settings say.
  • Submit once. A filed draft answers 409 to a second submit; show the person their receipt instead of trying again.
  • Never use a key in a form. Public form routes are safe in a browser; board keys are not.