[ANN] The end of Capchas: Thorny Form plugin

Rails
1

Thorny Form is a Rails plugin for unobtrusively protecting forms
against form-SPAM.

It adds extra fields like a honeypot and some others which can then be
checked before the form-data is used in your application.

To use Thorny Form you just need to change two lines per form. First
in the view
form_for has to be replaced by thorny_form_for
(remote_form_for by remote_thorny_form_for).

Then in the controller you have to add a check for spam in the shape
of
self.thorny_form_free_of_spam?.

See the full Thorny Form docs for a code example and installation
instructions here:
http://www.logilogi.org/pub/doc/plugins/thorny_form/

It is not an unbreakable solution, but it is likely to continue to
work for quite some time. The following joke from Ned Batchelders blog
nicely sketches why:

Jim and Joe are out hiking in the forest, when in the distance,
they see a huge bear. The bear notices them, and begins angrily
running toward them. Jim calmly checks the knots of his shoes and
stretches his legs.

Joe asks incredulously, “What are you doing? Do you think you can
outrun that bear!?”

Jim replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to
outrun you.”

Thorny Form is under the Affero GPL, and developed by the LogiLogi
Foundation (http://foundation.logilogi.org)

greetings,

Wybo W.

::student:

::Free Software and Open Source Developer:

2

On Feb 9, 2009, at 8:43 PM, Wybo W. wrote:

The following joke from Ned Batchelders blog
nicely sketches why:

Perhaps worthwhile pointing out the URL as well:

“Stopping spambots with hashes and honeypots”
– Ned Batchelder, January 2007
http://nedbatchelder.com/text/stopbots.html

–
PA.
http://alt.textdrive.com/nanoki/

3

On Feb 9, 2009, at 8:43 PM, Wybo W. wrote:

It is not an unbreakable solution, but it is likely to continue to
work for quite some time. The following joke from Ned Batchelders blog
nicely sketches why:

For what’s worth, Nanoki, a wiki engine implemented in Lua, uses Ned
Batchelders tricks to keep itself spam free.

For an illustration, check the source of the various form:

http://svr225.stepx.com:3388/main/editor
http://svr225.stepx.com:3388/cloud/editor

Cheers,

–
PA.
http://alt.textdrive.com/nanoki/

4

http://svr225.stepx.com:3388/cloud/editor
Thanks for providing these links.

Feedback on the Rails plugin
(http://www.logilogi.org/pub/doc/plugins/thorny_form/)
is most welcome.

It is used in http://www.LogiLogi.org (both for remarks and logis/
documents)

Wybo W.

::student:

::Free Software and Open Source Developer: