Prefill forms on external pages help

Anonymous
Not applicable

Prefill forms on external pages help

I'm trying to figure this out. I've followed this page:

http://developers.marketo.com/blog/external-page-prefill/

...and the links within.... I'm still at a loss on how to pull this off. Is there a code example I can follow somewhere?

I was able to get the auth and endpoint setup along with the token (which seems to go invalid a lot) - I was able to paste in the address bar and see proper data come back into the browser (https://<host>/rest/v1/leads.json?filterType=cookie&filterValues=<cookie>&fields=email,firstName,lastName,company&access_token=<token>) - but where do I go from here? I am quite certain I have all the pieces setup and ready to go, but don't know how to put them all together to get forms to be prefilled.

Tags (2)
14 REPLIES 14
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

You cannot access the REST API directly from the browser.  The security impact would be catastrophic.

The intent of that blog post is to describe a way that custom server-side code can be used as a gateway between the browser and your Marketo database. However, it is still a very bad idea unless you build in deliberate security and rate-limiting features. Ultimately, you shouldn't create any architecture that uses one API call in response to one uncontrolled end-user action.  You don't have enough calls for that.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

So, if I understand correctly, utilizing a method of pre-filling form fields on an external page is not a very good idea?

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

Utilizing a method is not a bad idea, but using that method is a bad idea (especially if you are not a server-side developer).

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

Sanford, in your opinion, would a sufficient rate limiter be something like setting a cookie to store the variables, and only doing the API call if the cookie isn't set? As I understand it, your concern is about hitting the API every time someone visits a page. This would seem to get around that.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

No, because (a) that's still one API call for every new legit visitor per day and (b) that means any malicious visitor just needs to disable/not send cookies.

Nav_Singh
Level 2

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

Created a modified flow on that idea to store that the a form has been filled in a cookie. If the cookie is not present then it won't redirect them past the form. No API calls employed right now. Doesn't seem really efficient.

Alok_Ramsisaria
Level 10

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

Andrew Yaple

We have a couple of Marketo Add-ons which can help you with this. The external landing pages where you want the pre-fill to work, which platform are they built on?

Nav_Singh
Level 2

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

Is there a straight-forward way to do this with ZenDesk?

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Prefill forms on external pages help

In which direction? zE.identify() can bring data into the ZenDesk widget. Please be specific about where the user will and won't be identified in you scenario.

I should mention that the add-on noted above, however attractive, is still using the methods recommended against in my first post.