Adobe DTM: Event based rule to track form submission - adobe-analytics

Question

I am trying to track form submission for a form using event based rule in DTM. I know that the ideal way to do it is to do via direct call rule but need to track the form fields as well through a data element and then into an eVar.
The form code looks something like this on the page:
<div style='display:none'>
<div id="popupform">
<div class="form_container">
<img src="/images/New-Offer-Pop-Up-Without-form_18-Jan-16.jpg" style="width: 100%;">
<form class="offerform" accept-charset="UTF-8" action="/site/sendtohs">
<div class="formrow"><input type="text" name="popup_fullname" class="new-input1 required" placeholder="Name" /></div>
<div class="formrow"><input type="email" name="popup_email" class="new-input1 required" placeholder="Email" /></div>
<div class="formrow"><input type="number" name="popup_phone" class="new-input1 required" placeholder="Mobile"
minlength="10" maxlength="15" /></div>
<input type="hidden" name="popup_url" value="/" /></br>
<p align="right"><input class="tbn newtbn" type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" /></p>
</form>
</div>
<div class="offerform_success" style="display: none">
<img src="/images/Thank-you-pop-up-new-xyz.jpg" style="height: 440px; width: 100%; position: absolute;width: 99%;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
The even based rule in DTM is :
DTM Rule
The event fires when I click on the Submit button but the rule does not validates if the form fields have been filled or not. Any hints how can I add validation to the form submit event within DTM.

Answer 1

Targeting the form
Firstly, based on your screenshot vs. posted code, your event will not trigger because the form tag does not have an id attribute of "popupform" (or any id attribute at all) (You do have that as an id in a parent div, but that's not what you are targeting). So, you will need to remove that.
If you only want to target the form if it's within a div, then you will need to add it as a Rule Condition. Under Rule Conditions > Criteria, choose "Data > Custom", and click Add Criteria.
In the code box, add the following:
if ($(this).parents('#popupform').length)
return true;
return false;
Note: I'm using jQuery syntax here for brevity and easy cross-browser compatibility. The overall goal is this references the targeted form, and you want to check that it is within an html element with the popupform id. The jQuery above traverses up the form's ancestor chain to look for it. If it finds it, we return true. Otherwise we return false. Ultimately, custom rule conditions should return true if you want it to pass, or false if not. Also note that if you have multiple rule conditions (which you will; see below), all conditions must return true in order for the rule to trigger. If your site does not use jQuery or you do not want to use jQuery for this, then you will need to write your own code following the above concept.
Validating the form fields
Before I get into this, one thing I should note is in general you should not rely on client-side form validation for your forms. It is super easy to disable/get around it. You should be doing form validation with server-side code when the form is submitted, and then pop whatever you need to pop (form complete tracking or w/e) after it has been server-side validated.
Maybe you already have server-side validation in place but for whatever reason you can't control popping a dtm rule after validation, and this is your next best thing. Well hopefully the only thing you are doing is popping tracking and not using the dtm rule for actual site functionality, but even then, just want you to be aware that this is a "lesser evil" solution, not a "good" solution.
Having said that, you can again turn to a custom condition to make sure all the form fields are filled out. Here is a quick and dirty custom rule condition to demonstrate. Again, under Rule Conditions > Criteria, choose "Data > Custom", and click Add Criteria (so you will now have another custom code box). Add the following:
var isFieldsFilled=true;
$.each($(this).serializeArray(),function(i,v) {
if (!v.value||v.value=='')
isFieldsFilled=false;
});
return isFieldsFilled;
This code again uses jQuery to grab the form fields of the targeted form and loops through them and sets a flag to false if one is found not to have a value. Again, this is kind of quick and dirty and will work based on your current form example, but you may need to expand upon it in practice.