Get Input Field value using DTM on Submitting a form

Question

I have two input fields that had the user access card and password. and the user click on submit button to authenticate.

I'm using DTM in my app to capture the user navigation but I want also to get the values of those field to my DTM so I would know who the user is.

And here is what I tried but with no luck.

• Created Data element as below:

And created Event based rule. But not sure how to get the values to be shown in my report:

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Example Form

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Since you did not post what your form code looks like, here is a simple form based on what I see in the screenshots you posted, that I will use in my examples below.

<form id='someForm'>
  User Name <input type='text' name='userName'><br>
  Password  <input type='password' name='userPass'><br>
  <input type='submit' value='submit' />
</form>

Data Elements

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Okay first, let's go over what you did wrong.

1) You said you want to capture two form fields, but you only have one data element...maybe? You didn't really convey this in your question. I just assumed as much because of what you did throughout the rest of the screenshots. But to be clear: you should have two separate data elements, one for each field.

2) The CSS Selector Chain value you used is just input , so it will select the first input field on the page, which may or may not coincide with one of the input fields you are looking to capture. So, you need to use a CSS selector that is unique to the input field you want to capture. Something as simple as input[name="userName"] will probably be good enough (but I cannot confirm this without seeing your site). You will need to do the same for the 2nd Data Element you create for the other input field (eg input[name="userPass"] )

3) In the Get the value of dropdown, you chose "name". This means that if you have for example <input type='text' name='foo'> , it will return "foo". Since you want to capture the value the user inputs, you should select "value" from the dropdown.

Solution

Putting all the above together, you should have two Data Elements that look something like this (one for the user name field and one for the password field; only one shown below):

Event Base Rule

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Okay first, let's go over what you did wrong.

1) The value you specified in Element Tag or Selector is input . You aren't submitting an input field; you are submitting a form. Input fields don't even have a submit event handler! Your Event Type is "submit", so at a minimum, Element Tag or Selector should be form . But really..

2) Ideally, you should use a CSS Selector that more directly and uniquely targets the form you want to trigger the rule for. For example, maybe the form has an id attribute you can target in your CSS Selector. Or maybe the form is on a specific page, so you can add additional conditions based on the URL. What combination of CSS Selector or other conditions you use to uniquely identify your form depends on how your site is setup. In my example form above, I added an id attribute, so I can use form#someForm as the CSS Selector.

3) You checked the Manually assign properties & attributes checkbox, and then added two Property = Value items. This tells DTM to only trigger the rule if the input has a name attribute with value of "userName" AND if it has a name attribute value of "userPass". Well name can't have two values at the same time, now can it!

<input name='foo' name='bar'> <!-- bad! -->

All of this needs to be removed, because again (from #1), you should be targeting a form , not an input field.

4) For good measure, looks like you added a Rule Condition of type Data > Custom , but the code box is empty. The rule will only trigger if the box returns a truthy value. Since there is no code in the box, it will return undefined (default value returned by a javascript function if nothing is returned), which is a falsey value. This also needs to be removed.

Solution

Putting all the above together, the Conditions section of the Event Based Rule should look something like this:

But again, ideally your conditions should be more complex, to more uniquely target your form.

Referencing the Data Elements

Lastly, you can reference the input fields to populate whatever fields in the various Tool sections with the %data_element% syntax. For example, you can populate a couple of Adobe Analytics eVars like this (data element names reflect the examples I created above):

Or, you can reference them with javascript syntax in a custom code box as eg _satellite.getVar('form_userName');

Additional Notes

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1) I Strongly recommend you do not capture / track this type of info. Firstly, based on context clues in your post, it looks like this may count as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), which is protected under a number of laws, varying from country to country. Secondly, in general, it is a big security risk to capture this information and send it to Adobe (or anywhere else, really). Overall, capturing this sort of data is practically begging for fines, lawsuits, etc.

2) Note that (assuming all conditions met), the "submit" Event Type will track when the user clicks the submit button, which is not necessarily the same thing as the user successfully completing the form (filling out all the form fields with valid input, etc.). I don't know the full context/motive of your requirements, but in general, most people aim to only capture an event / data on successful form completion (and sometimes separately track form errors).