I have a form that calculates two values, form works perfectly, however i'm having some problems working out how I can calculate the two values and return the answer as rendered HTML so I can style it all nice and pretty for the user to see.
All help will much appreciated. Thanks.
In a Drupal form there are three types of callback that are normally necessary to create a form:
The form builder is the function that builds the form using an array the form API understands
The form validation handler is the function that validates the values submitted from the users
The form submission handler is the function that acts on the values submitted from the users
Of those functions, the one that outputs the result of the calculation done on the values submitted from the users is the last one. Normally, the form submission handler saves the data in the database, and show a message to the users through drupal_set_message(), but it could also simply show the result of the operations done on the entered data.
Since Drupal 7, the output of a form submission handler, as well as the output produced from a menu callback, can be a rendering array, and not a string. A rendering array has the pro of being easily altered from third-party modules through hook_page_build(), or hook_page_alter().
node_view() is an example of menu callback that returns a rendering array, and not a string.
If it's just a message you want then you should look into drupal_set_message. It allows you to set a message like this:
drupal_set_message(t('Hello, world.'),'myClass');
Which outputs HTML like this:
<div class="messages myClass">Hello, world</div>
That would be a very simple way to set a message for the user to see once the form is submitted. If you need something a little more advanced, look into my answer here and this Drupal answer here.
Related
I have three different fields/textbox widgets, that rely on querying the same data source to be checked to avoid duplication. For reasons, I do not want to turn on the unique/required for those three fields.
I put some code to check for validation. My problem is that when I call the form's validate function, it takes some time till the validation comes back with an error message. However the form's validate returns immediately and allows people to click Submit.
How can I avoid this problem?
Block till validation kicks (setTimeout function?)
Set a separate invisible field such as working and set the validationError on the field and clear after validations clear? This will probably be a numeric field so that I can wait for all streams in parallel to finish.
Final question. is Validate a blocking function as it goes through the fields? I am guessing Yes.
I would like to do some interesting stuff with the hits that are being displayed based on the search query that user is not only typing into search box but actually filtering using the instant search filters. I have filter based on hierarchical events_location taxonomy. Based on what user selected I would get the info in JS variable that I can then further use to do other operations in the hits div, specifically on each hit card.
So my URL when searching updates like this:
/what-to-see/?q=&idx=sdbeta_posts_events&p=0&hFR%5Btaxonomies_hierarchical.events_calendar.lvl0%5D%5B0%5D=JUL%204&hFR%5Btaxonomies_hierarchical.events_category.lvl0%5D%5B0%5D=All&hFR%5Btaxonomies_hierarchical.events_locations.lvl0%5D%5B0%5D=Paddock%20Stage
I could potentially take the URL and extract the data from it, but I am sure there is more elegant way of working with the query.
In InstantSearch.js, the state is managed by another library called the algoliasearch-helper. Through this library you can read and write the search parameters.
The cleanest to access the helper is to build a custom widget, which is a plain object with lifecycle hooks (initial rendering and the other renderings). You can read more about custom widgets there.
Once you've accessed the helper, you can read and write with the helper API.
This can be found under search.searchParameters
So:
console.log(search.searchParameters);
Will give you whole object that you can then work with.
There is however one issue with this and that is that it works only on initial load. I was unable to make this work or get any data after starting to selecting categories. So if anyone knows how to use this so it updates after each selection please comment bellow.
Is there an API for adding to the Form Results that results from standard Forms are added to from an External Form?
I want to try avoid adding to the tables btform, btformanswers, etc. manually
No.
See https://github.com/concrete5/concrete5/blob/master/web/concrete/core/controllers/blocks/form.php#L354-L415 -- the core's form block updates the table manually.
As johjoh says, you could theoretically mimic a post to a form block, by instantiating it and then calling action_submit_form(), but that's just as fraught with difficulty, too... you'd have to keep the "form" in sync with your data, and possibly worry about the token and block ID and all that....
What's your exact use case? New block type? Some sort of external API? The form viewing interface in the dashboard is nice, but nothing that special. I think most people want to get data out of it, not in....
I am building a custom module that will allow my users to do a simple query against an MS SQL database. I've built the form using hook_form() and have gotten validation to work.
I'm planning on retrieving the data from hook_form_submit(), but once I've done that, how do I append it below the form? It does not appear that I have access to $output from hook_form_submit(). I'm at a loss as to what to do next.
Thanks
Dana
When you are rendering the form you should check for $form_state['values'] to see if the user has already submitted a form when you're rendering the form. Then you could paint the form results in the same step as painting the form.
The first time the user loads the form page the $form_state variable won't contain any submitted form info so you can render an empty results table.
There's a good illustration of the Drupal Form API workflow on Drupal.org here: Form API Internal Workflow Illustration
The problem in trying to output data in the hook_form() method is that the method gets invoked twice which clears the post values the second time through. Throw a dpm($form_state) in the hook_form() function and you'll see two sets of post data. One with values and one without.
So after dissecting the built in Search module, which pretty much operates exactly the way I want my form to work, I figured out how this is done. Well, at least one way you can do it.
What Search module does is take the values from $form_state in hook_form_submit() and pastes them into the URL, then it sets the $form_state['redirect'] to that new URL, effectively storing those variables in the URL and changing the POST to a GET.
Now, in the callback, they extract those values from the URL, do the search on them, THEN they call drupal_get_form(), append the results to the end and return it.
There's another solution HERE where they use SESSION to store the values until the second trip through. Weird, but it works.
I need a form which will allow creation of several related nodes at the same time. All of the nodes involve CCK fields.
I would like to use as much of CCK's built-in validation, submission, input widget, and security functionality as possible/practical.
What is the best way to accomplish this in Drupal 6? Are there 'best practices' or docs anywhere?
Here are 3 possibilities I can see. I would love feedback on whether any of these would work, or if there are even better options.
1.
start with the standard node creation form for content type foo.
modify the form by adding fields for content type bar, using hook form_alter [can cck widgets for content type bar be inserted directly?]
use a custom submit handler to create node of type bar when the form is submitted
[can the standard cck handler be called? or do i need to 'manually' construct the node object, do my own validation, and use node_save?]
2.
create a new, custom form that concatenates the 'normal' node creation forms for the relevant content types.
then use hook form_alter to modify the forms as necessary.
allow standard cck submit handlers to do the work of creating the nodes.
3.
create a custom form from scratch
create the nodes in my own submit handlers, using node prepare, node save, etc.
If found documentation on re-using the standard node creation form, but creating multiple nodes at the same time is not mentioned.
Using hook nodeapi and hook form_alter is documented in a post on advomatic's site, but the particular method descrube seems to require polluting one of the content types with 'dummy' fields.
Thank you very much for your help!
The advomatic guys posted a nice solution to this.
http://www.advomatic.com/blogs/jonathan-delaigle/multiple-nodes-single-node-submission
why not just use hook_nodeapi to handle the node creation for certain content types.
just set up a test condition to see if $node->type = 'foo', and then run a function to create two nodes or however many, using the values from the predefined fields. you can even set hook_nodeapi to only run when the $op is almost ready to insert the node into the database, thus ensuring the object has been run through appropriate validation before being passed on to the new nodes that need to be created.
http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_nodeapi/6 this page has a list of all available operations for the $op variable and what they do.
I hope that helps
If the 2nd type bar needs only one or two additional inputs (fields) from the user, I would go with your approach one.
But given your clarification it seems that foo and bar are sufficiently different and complex, so your approach two seems more reasonable.
Concatenate both forms into one and hide the bar fields that you want to populate from the foo fields (or node, after you created it). In the forms validate and submit functions, you'll have to separate the forms again so that you can call the standard validation/submit handlers for both separately.
I have not done this yet, so I'm not sure how well this will play with the cck functionality, but I would expect it to work reasonably well to give it a try.