How to add Magento builtin captcha mechanism to Contact Us default page.

How to add Magento builtin captcha mechanism to Contact Us default page.

Step1:-

1. find customer/captcha/forms element in core_config table and add “contact_form” form name to the list
2. modify config.xml in /app/code/core/Mage/Captcha/etc

in - <frontend> - <areas> add something like

<contact_form>
   <label>Contact Us</label> 

</contact_form>

and in - <always_for>

<contact_form>1</contact_form>

Also there\\\’s a miss for translation in the config file, so you should add this to the <frontend> section:

<translate>
  <modules>
 <Mage_Captcha>
 <files>
   <default>Mage_Captcha.csv</default> 
   </files>
   </Mage_Captcha>
   </modules>
 </translate>

Refresh cache. Login to Admin, and make sure Contact Us form is listed in CAPTCHA configuration

2) Modify captcha layout xml file in frontend/base/default (or your theme)
add this section

<contacts_index_index>
 <reference name="contactForm">
 <block type="core/text_list" name="form.additional.info">
<block type="captcha/captcha" name="captcha">
 <reference name=\\\"head\\\">
    <action method="addJs">
   <file>mage/captcha.js</file> 
   </action>
   </reference>
     <action method="setImgWidth">
   <width>230</width> 
  </action>
<action method="setImgHeight">
   <width>50</width> 
   </action>
   </block>
   </block>
   </reference>
  </contacts_index_index>

Refresh cache

3) Modify form code in /frontend/base/default/template/contacts/form.phtml to add placeholder to render captcha layout
Add this line of code right before </ul>

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('form.additional.info'); ?>

4) FInal part - how to\\\"trap\\\" the post from the Contact Us form and check the captcha
Mage uses Events and Observer to achieve this, and it works very well for the forms/events they have implemented this feature. I was not able to find events specific for Contact Us form, so, IMHO the most obvious solution is to override indexController in code/core/Mage/Contacts/controllers and in the postAction method, inside try block add the following code:

$formId = 'contact_form';
           $captchaModel = Mage::helper('captcha')->getCaptcha($formId);
           if ($captchaModel->isRequired()) {
            if (!$captchaModel->isCorrect($this->_getCaptchaString($this->getRequest(), $formId))) {
                Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->addError(Mage::helper('captcha')->__('Incorrect CAPTCHA.'));
                $this->setFlag('', Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action::FLAG_NO_DISPATCH, true);
                Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->setCustomerFormData($this->getRequest()->getPost());
                $this->getResponse()->setRedirect(Mage::getUrl('*/*/'));
                return;
            }
           }

and add this \\\"utility method to the controller class:

protected function _getCaptchaString($request, $formId)
    {
        $captchaParams = $request->getPost(Mage_Captcha_Helper_Data::INPUT_NAME_FIELD_VALUE);
        return $captchaParams[$formId];
    }

5) Refresh cache, and give it a try