New field problem

[Harish_Gupta6]

Hi,

I have created new field in Marketo with name "xyz" and I am using this field on forms. After approving the forms when I am rechecking the forms, its showing the field name as "xyz__c"

My question is how the name of field has changed automatically and whats the impact of this?

[SanfordWhiteman]

"__c" just means "custom." It's perfectly harmless. Like Salesforce and other platforms, Marketo separates built-in fields from custom fields with a special suffix (some platforms use a prefix). This ensures that if the platform itself ever adds a field of the same name, there won't be a naming collision.

[Harish_Gupta6]

And Suppose I am integrating this form in landing page and there i am creating hidden variable "xyz" then do i need to use name "xyz" or "xyz__c"

eg.

<input type="hidden" name="xyz" id="xyz" value="test"/>

or

<input type="hidden" name="xyz__c" id="xyz__c" value="test"/>

Which one is valid??

[SanfordWhiteman]

You should be using the Marketo Forms Editor to build out your forms as much as possible, and complement that with the Forms 2.0 API.  What's the reason you're manually building out forms in raw HTML? 

In any case, the API name (__c) is the correct one.

[Anonymous]

I'm not the OP, but I definitely do lots of custom form work - mostly for software companies that want to do simultaneous lead capture w/ actions on their applications/platforms (like generating a trial account).

[SanfordWhiteman]

Sure, there are justifications for bespoke forms!  However, there are way more forms out there than there are justifications.  And lots of people who've absent-mindedly built DoS vulnerabilities into otherwise resilient websites that way:

AUDITOR: So how much traffic can the site handle?

SYSTEMS GUY: Well, we just put in a new load balancer, so I'd say 200 requests/sec.

DEV GUY: Except for that one page which can handle 1 request every 2 seconds.

AUDITOR: (writing) OK, 1 request every 2 seconds...

IMO, a question about field names is a bit of a red flag that the whole ecosystem hasn't been taken into account, since any bespoke form work is based on the requirements of a native form and a native form is easy to inspect.

[Kenny_Elkington · Accepted solution]

This actually is not true, fields created on the Marketo side have user-defined API names, and do not have an automatically appended suffix.  Fields with __c appended were likely created in SFDC and then provisioned in Marketo by the sync.  If you are building a custom form, you should use the SOAP API name from Export Field Names to ensure that you're submitting to the correct field.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I actually assumed the field came from SFDC, though the OP described it differently.

The overall scenario still seems kind of opaque (why custom forms, is the post actually coming from the client to Mkto or is the data going to a third-party server and then to Mkto, etc.).

[Harish_Gupta6]

Hi,

I have observed one more strange thing.

I have different sets of forms. Some forms were designed using Latest Form editor and some were designed using the old Form editor.

All forms which were designed with New form editor has field name as "XYZ"

and all forms which were designed with Old form editor has field name as "XYZ__c"

To cross verify, I have removed the field from form designed with old editor and then add the field again but after reopening the form, i saw the field name as automatically chagned to "XYZ__c".

Why is it like this? Is it something related to Form editor. Please help me to understand.