18. Submission Processing Pipeline

The complete lifecycle of a form submission from POST to response.

Pipeline Stages

1. Nonce Verification — check_ajax_referer( 'formforge_nonce', 'nonce' )
2. Anti-Spam Checks — honeypot, time check, token validation, reCAPTCHA
3. Form Loading — form is loaded from the database by form_id
4. Field Sanitization — each field value is sanitized based on type via FORMFORGE_Field_Types::sanitize()
5. Field Validation — required checks, format validation, custom regex
6. File Upload Processing — files are validated (MIME, size) and moved to uploads directory
7. Conditional Logic Evaluation — hidden fields are excluded from required validation
8. Submission Storage — data is JSON-encoded and inserted into wp_formforge_submissions; if the insert fails, the AJAX response is an error and no integrations or submit analytics are fired
9. Integration Dispatch — email, webhooks, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Google Sheets, etc.
10. Post/User Creation — if enabled, WordPress posts or users are created
11. Analytics Tracking — submit event recorded in wp_formforge_analytics only after a submission row exists and analytics is currently licensed
12. Response — JSON success/error response sent to the frontend

Hooking into the Pipeline

// Before save (stage between 2 and 8)
add_action( 'formforge_before_submit', function( $form_id, $data, $form ) {
    // Custom validation, data modification, external checks
}, 10, 3 );

// After save (stage after 11)
add_action( 'formforge_after_submit', function( $submission_id, $form_id, $data ) {
    // CRM pushes, logging, external notifications
}, 10, 3 );

Error Handling Strategy

Integration errors (Mailchimp, Google Sheets, HubSpot) are logged but never block the submission. The user always sees a success response if the core submission succeeds. Mailchimp and HubSpot write a short rolling diagnostic tail to the formforge_integration_log option so support can distinguish skipped submissions from remote API failures without exposing the error to visitors.

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