Create custom reCAPTCHA images using their API
If you need to spam protect your contact, comment or any other public form you should think about using a CAPTCHA image. A CAPTCHA image is an image with a random text which spam bots can’t read. The visitor need to enter that text into a form field and only if there is a match the form get processed.
Try a search for “CAPTCHA image” on Google and you will find a lot of scripts, some of them are powerful and some of them are not very effective. I’m using reCAPTCHA since several years, their challenge image is very effective and safe and if people can’t read it they can listen to an audio file.
I’m sure you have seen this image before, this is the challenge image you get with their default configuration. if you don’t like this huge RED image (like me) you need a custom theme. The good news is they offer a very powerful API system for the client side and also for the server side. In this tutorial we use some jQuery code together with the reCAPTCHA ajax library to generate the challenge images. The validation process is done by a PHP script that use a simple cURL function to submit the request and response to the reCAPTCHA server to test the submitted match. We use also the jQuery form plugin to process the form fields and client side validation.
If you like to see how it looks like check this custom CAPTCHA theme demo page.
reCAPTCHA client side script
Before we start we need to register a domain name at the reCAPTCHA website to receive a public and private key. To create a custom challenge image the Ajax way, we need to include the external file recaptcha_ajax.js and we use the following JavaScript code:
var RecaptchaOptions = { theme : 'custom' }; Recaptcha.create('your public key', 'recaptcha_image', RecaptchaOptions); Recaptcha.focus_response_field();
There is only one option required for this custom function, check this link if you like to set more options.
Next we need a small HTML snippet to show the challenge image:
<div id="recaptcha_image"></div> <p> <input type="text" name="recaptcha_response_field" id="recaptcha_response_field" size="30" /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" id="submit_button" /> </p>
To get this working you need to create a form text field with the name and ID recaptcha_response_field, use the same ID name of the target DIV container as you used in the JavaScript function. Using both snippets in used in a HTML page will generate a neutral CAPTCHA image like:
The current code doesn’t process our CAPTCHA validation script. We do this using jQuery and the jQuery form plugin. In this tutorial we do not explain how the plugin works, we did that already in this jQuery form plugin tutorial. In the next JavaScript snippet we check if the text field is not empty and if there is a response we hide the form and show the response in the DIV container output.
$(document).ready(function() { var options = { target: '#output', // target element(s) to be updated with server response beforeSubmit: showRequest, // pre-submit callback success: showResponse, // post-submit callback url: 'recaptcha.php' // override for form's 'action' attribute }; $('#myform').submit(function() { $(this).ajaxSubmit(options); return false; }); var RecaptchaOptions = { theme : 'custom' }; Recaptcha.create('your public key', 'recaptcha_image', RecaptchaOptions); }); // pre-submit callback function showRequest(formData, jqForm, options) { var resp_field = $('input[name=recaptcha_response_field]').fieldValue(); if (!resp_field[0]) { alert('You need to enter the validation string.'); return false; } } // post-submit callback function showResponse(responseText, statusText) { if (statusText == 'success' && responseText != '') { $('#formcont').html(''); } else { alert('Error while processing your request\nPlease try it again on a later moment.'); } }
Server side validation script
Next we need to create a PHP script called recaptcha.php that will validate the entered text from our CAPTCHA image.
if (!empty($_POST['recaptcha_response_field'])) { $answer = trim(stripslashes($_POST['recaptcha_response_field'])); $postData['challenge'] = $_POST['recaptcha_challenge_field']; $postData['response'] = urlencode($answer); $postData['remoteip'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; $postData['privatekey'] = 'your private key'; $ch = curl_init("http://api-verify.recaptcha.net/verify"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $postData); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); $data = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); $response = explode(PHP_EOL, $data); if ($response[0] == 'true') { echo 'Success, you may proceed!'; } else { echo 'Error, please try again.'; // check the API documentation for detailed error reports } }
In this script we create a post array for the cURL function and post all the data to the reCAPTCHA API URL. Note all used variables are required, the post variable recaptcha_challenge_field is generated by the client API. The value for the challenge entry need to be encoded before we can post that value to the reCAPTCHA API. After we received the response we split the string and check if the first part is equal to true and output a success or error message which is presented in the target DIV container.
If you like to use this script on your own website feel free to download the script on our PHP script forum.
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Comments
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Hi Michael,
ever thought about that this kind of comments are spam too?
You promote PEAR, even if it’s a free product 
Olaf,
Sorry, I forgot you’re not a fan of PEAR 
Your tutorial is well written and is helpful for people to learn how to integrate with reCAPTCHA.
My reason for mentioning Services_ReCaptcha is not to take away from the educational aspects of your post, but to let people know a well written packaged solution also exists.
Cheers, and happy coding!
Your tutorial is well written and is helpful for people to learn how to integrate with reCAPTCHA.
The reason for this tutorial is to show how stuff works PLUS how-to create a custom challenge for your form using jQuery and the jQuery form plugin.
I’m sure there are many scripts for creating and validating a reCAPTCHA challenge, but do the work slightly together with jQuery like in this tutorial? I don’t think so…
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
A lot of this logic, including the ability to display custom themes, is encapsulated in the Services_ReCaptcha PEAR package.