CAPTCHAs are an integral part of website security. People complete millions of CAPTCHA tests online every day.
If you haven’t implemented CAPTCHA validation on your website, it could create a big problem for you, setting you up as a target for spammers.
Here’s everything you need to know about CAPTCHAs and how you can easily implement them with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
What Is CAPTCHA?
CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” This term was coined in 2003 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper, and John Langford. It’s a type of challenge-response test that websites use to determine whether the user is human or not.
CAPTCHAs add security to websites by providing challenges that are difficult for bots to perform but relatively easy for humans. For example, identifying all the images of a car from a set of multiple images is difficult for bots but simple enough for human eyes.
The idea of CAPTCHA originates from the Turing Test. A Turing Test is a method to test whether a machine can think like a human or not. You can think of a CAPTCHA test as a “reverse Turing Test” since it challenges a human to prove they are not a computer.
Why Your Website Needs CAPTCHA Validation
CAPTCHAs are used to prevent bots from automatically submitting forms with spam and other harmful content. Even companies like Google use it to prevent their system from spam attacks. Here are some of the reasons why your website stands to benefit from CAPTCHA validation:
- CAPTCHAs help to prevent hackers and bots from spamming the registration systems by creating fake accounts. If they aren’t prevented, they can use those accounts for nefarious purposes.
- CAPTCHAs can forbid brute force log-in attacks from your website which hackers use to try logging in using thousands of passwords.
- CAPTCHAs can restrict bots from spamming the review section by providing false comments.
- CAPTCHAs aid in preventing ticket inflation as some people purchase many tickets for reselling. CAPTCHAs can even prevent false registrations to free events.
- CAPTCHAs can restrict cyber crooks from spamming blogs with dodgy comments and links to harmful websites.
There are many more reasons that support integrating CAPTCHA validation into your website. You can do so with the following code.
If you want to have a look at a live version of this project, you can check out this demo.
HTML CAPTCHA Code
In this project, you will be adding CAPTCHA to an HTML form. Use the following code to add CAPTCHA in HTML:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<div class="center">
<h1 id="captchaHeading">
Captcha Validator Using HTML, CSS and JavaScript
</h1>
<div id="captchaBackground">
<canvas id="captcha">captcha text</canvas>
<input id="textBox" type="text" name="text">
<div id="buttons">
<input id="submitButton" type="submit">
<button id="refreshButton" type="submit">Refresh</button>
</div>
<span id="output"></span>
</div>
</div>
<script src="script.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
This code mainly consists of 7 elements:
- <h1 id=”captchaHeading”> <h1>: This element is used to display the heading of the CAPTCHA form.
- <canvas id=”captcha”> </canvas>: This element is used to display the CAPTCHA text.
- <input id=”textBox” type=”text” name=”text”> – This element is used to create an input box to type the CAPTCHA.
- <input id=”submitButton” type=”submit”>: This button submits the form and checks whether the CAPTCHA and the typed text are the same.
- <button id=”refreshButton” type=”submit”> </button>: This button is used to refresh the CAPTCHA.
- <span id=”output”> </span>: This element is used to display the output according to the entered text.
- <div class=”center”> </div>: This is the parent element that contains all the other elements.
This HTML page links to CSS and JavaScript files via the link and script elements respectively. You must add the link tag inside the head and the script tag at the end of the body.
There are many HTML tags and attributes, and remembering them all can be overwhelming. You can always refer to an HTML cheat sheet to get a quick refresher on HTML tags and attributes.
You can also integrate this code with existing forms on your website.
CSS CAPTCHA Code
You can use CSS—Cascading Style Sheets—to style HTML elements. Use the following CSS code to style the CAPTCHA validation form:
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto&display=swap');
body {
background-color: #232331;
font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
}
#captchaBackground {
height: 220px;
width: 250px;
background-color: #2d3748;
display: flex;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
flex-direction: column;
}
#captchaHeading {
color: white;
}
#captcha {
height: 80%;
width: 80%;
font-size: 30px;
letter-spacing: 3px;
margin: auto;
display: block;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
}
.center {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
align-items: center;
}
#submitButton {
margin-top: 2em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
background-color: #08e5ff;
border: 0px;
font-weight: bold;
}
#refreshButton {
background-color: #08e5ff;
border: 0px;
font-weight: bold;
}
#textBox {
height: 25px;
}
.incorrectCaptcha {
color: #FF0000;
}
.correctCaptcha {
color: #7FFF00;
}
Add or remove CSS properties from this code according to your preference. You can also give an elegant look to the form container using the CSS box-shadow property.
JavaScript CAPTCHA Code
You can use JavaScript to add functionality to a webpage. Use the following code to add complete functionality to the CAPTCHA validation form:
let captchaText = document.querySelector('#captcha');
var ctx = captchaText.getContext("2d");
ctx.font = "30px Roboto";
ctx.fillStyle = "#08e5ff";let userText = document.querySelector('#textBox');
let submitButton = document.querySelector('#submitButton');
let output = document.querySelector('#output');
let refreshButton = document.querySelector('#refreshButton');
let alphaNums = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z', '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9'];
let emptyArr = [];
for (let i = 1; i <= 7; i++) {
emptyArr.push(alphaNums[Math.floor(Math.random() * alphaNums.length)]);
}
var c = emptyArr.join('');
ctx.fillText(emptyArr.join(''),captchaText.width/4, captchaText.height/2);
userText.addEventListener('keyup', function(e) {
if (e.keyCode === 13) {
if (userText.value === c) {
output.classList.add("correctCaptcha");
output.innerHTML = "Correct!";
} else {
output.classList.add("incorrectCaptcha");
output.innerHTML = "Incorrect, please try again";
}
}
});
submitButton.addEventListener('click', function() {
if (userText.value === c) {
output.classList.add("correctCaptcha");
output.innerHTML = "Correct!";
} else {
output.classList.add("incorrectCaptcha");
output.innerHTML = "Incorrect, please try again";
}
});
refreshButton.addEventListener('click', function() {
userText.value = "";
let refreshArr = [];
for (let j = 1; j <= 7; j++) {
refreshArr.push(alphaNums[Math.floor(Math.random() * alphaNums.length)]);
}
ctx.clearRect(0, 0, captchaText.width, captchaText.height);
c = refreshArr.join('');
ctx.fillText(refreshArr.join(''),captchaText.width/4, captchaText.height/2);
output.innerHTML = "";
});
Now you have a fully functional CAPTCHA validation form. If you want to have a look at the complete code, you can clone the GitHub repository of this CAPTCHA-Validator Project. After cloning the repository, open the HTML file and you’ll see the following output:
When you enter the correct CAPTCHA code in the input box, it will display the following output:
When you enter an incorrect CAPTCHA code in the input box, it will display the following output:
Secure Your Website With CAPTCHAs
In the past, many organizations and businesses have suffered heavy losses like data breaches, spam attacks, etc. as a result of not having CAPTCHA forms on their websites. It’s highly recommended to add CAPTCHA to your website, as it adds a security layer to prevent the website from cybercriminals.
Google also launched a free service called “reCAPTCHA” that helps in protecting websites from spam and abuse. CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA seem similar, but they’re not quite the same thing. Sometimes CAPTCHAs feel frustrating and difficult to understand for many users. Although, there’s an important reason as to why they’re made to be difficult.
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