I have a few forms who's data needs to be written to the main database in their own tables. Just simple name-email collection forms, that are part of regular pages in drupal. I suspect the right way to do this would be to write a module that would have the query in a function, but this is just a guess. I've never written a module before, and don't know how the form would be processed that way.
It's also a guess that to perform the db query within a node would be insecure?
The only other idea I have would be to use a php file on the server to do the form processing, with the db query written there, but that seems very non-drupal, as far as I can tell.
How to??
http://drupal.org/node/508 is Drupal's info on module development
You'll be wanting to use the function "db_query()"
You can use Drupal's built in methods to build forms though that will save the data for you. Have a look at the module developers guide though and you should be able to figure it out. Module development sounds intimidating but it's not as hectic as it seems once you actually know what's going on with Drupal (hence, read the guide).
Have you checked what's already out there? Webform may be able to solve your needs without any custom code.
Also, I highly recommend the book Pro Drupal Development if you want to learn more about Drupal and basic module development.
I'd second the Webform module. Create a really simple webform with name and email (results can be emailed or stored automatically in the DB, and can be exported easily in several formats). Then check out the Webform Block module to put that webform in a block and place wherever you need it on your site. No custom coding required!
Here is an excerpt from the Webform Block project page:
Allows embedding a webform node into a block which can be positioned in any block region (theme space permitting).
Handles redirecting back to the current page on validation errors.
A good use for this is to add a site wide contact form inline on your pages, such as in the footer or sidebar.
Multiple webforms can appear on the same page. The contents of the block is simply a node, so theme work can be done in the node-webform.tpl.php file as usual.
Related
We are building a Page with dynamic functionality using ASP.NET + Sitecore 7.0.
Is it practical and appropriate use Sitecore templates for:
SQL Stored Procedure Name to be invoked
JavaScript to be invoked
ColumnNames to be used etc (related to coding customization)
Or should these configuration properties remain inside the ASP.NET Project itself?
What is the primary purpose of Data Templates in Sitecore?
Are they for developer customization or customer-level customization?
The purpose of a data template in Sitecore is to define the set of fields for content items which inherit from that template. - Think of a data template as a class and the content items (pages) as instances of that class.
Templates are usually used to define the user-editable content of pages within a site, that being said you can have items to store information which is not managed by regular content editors. The question is where do you draw the line between things which should be put into Sitecore and things which should be a part of the solution. My advice is only put things in Sitecore if they need to be there. If you have to have the ability for editors or admins to configure those settings/properties.
I would say that putting SQL/ColumnNames is probably a bad idea unless you are building some sort of report builder interface in which case it may be essential?
Likewise with placing JavaScript into Sitecore; this can be OK in moderation (e.g. snippets of analytics code which content editors may want control over?). If you're placing whole libraries of JavaScript into Sitecore, you're probably doing it wrong.
One final point to note is findability/re-factorability of code: if you have code spread between Sitecore and your solution, it can make it very difficult to maintain as it is difficult to get a complete overview of code involved.
I am just wondering if there is any hook to integrate WHMCS database with my existing Drupal site.
WHMCS has its own CMS and so as Drupal. I have used the same html twice for WHM and also for Drupal hence the problem is that I have to change twice if there is any design update.
The answer is no, there is no such thing.
A hook, in Drupal is not something magically to integrate anything. A hook is merely a architectual concept to allow code being ran on several occasions. A hook is not what you are looking for.
You will need to implement each and every piece of integration with Create, Read, Update, Delete synchronisation. A user in Drupal gets updated, that should fire code wich updates the data in your other CMS's database. A piece of content is created in your WHCMS, then it needs to become available in Drupal too. And so on and so on.
So, you will first need to define very clearly what you want to integrate and share between both. If it is only the session (single sign on) there are several solutions ready to use. But if you need all content, their comments, search-results and so on to be shared, you have a long way to go.
The reailty with integrating two CMS's entirely, is that you often need more then the sum of the codebase of both CMSs as gluecode: it needs such great amounts of complex integration and synchronisation-code, that in the same time you had probably written both Drupal and WHCMS from ground up. My advice: don't even try.
Hooks are mainly for CMS operations (creating/updating/deleting content). Sounds like you just need to share the theming from the CSS and header/footer HTML across both systems.
You can switch Drupal to use the Smarty template engine: http://drupal.org/project/smarty
You may then be able to create a Drupal theme that imports the header.tpl.php and footer.tpl.php from the WHMCS theme.
You may need to remove some of the Smarty markup and variables from the WHMCS side to simplify the header and footer to the point they can be used with Drupal (if you can make the header and the footer pure HTML, you may not even need to use Smarty on the Drupal side), or write a lot of preprocessing code on the Drupal side you may be able to populate the template variables with values from the WHMCS database.
I just finished installing SiteFinity 3.7 standard version on windows server 2008. Is there a way to entirely/partially import an already existing .NET project (ASP.NET) into SiteFinity with some minor changes in the code of course (may be by changinf a couple of xml files or something similar). I could only see an "export" under Administration->Tools section but no import. I am new to SiteFinity so a detailed help/guidance would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
I think you're on your own here. Sitefinity stores everything in a database so you'll have to programmatically convert the sitemap (read XML insert into database). Sitefinity does have an API that allows you to do this. You can for example create pages and add controls to that page.
Sitefinity uses MasterPages as templates so that's easy. You can also re-use any controls you have.
But, by the time you're done writing the conversion code, I think you'll find that you could have done it all by hand in less time. Unless this is a huge website you need to convert.
if you just need to import the pages you can add them as "external pages". this allows you to set permissions, page properties, and add it to you navigation/sitemap but of course doesn't let you edit the page inside of sitefinity. I did this with some sites that were developed seperately but needed to be in our sitemap.
You could also wrap the content and code into user controls, then add those to the page. We did this for an application that we built. the pages had to live inside of sitefinity, but the programming was already done, and needed to be in user controls. Once again you don't get to edit the content in sitefinity, but you get to keep your existing code.
Finally, if you used any kind of content management system, you can easily import stuff like news/events/etc via the various managers, it works something like:
var mgr = new ContentManager("News");
var content = new mgr.CreateItem("text/html");
content.SetMetaData("Title", importedItem.Title)
...
mgr.SaveContent(content);
this isn't EXACTLY the code but it's something similar; you can use the api documentation to learn more.
If it's plain text, then unfortunately yes, you'll have to manually copy this into sitefinity. It is a bit of work, I did this with our hundreds of pages, but in the end it's worth it to have the cms benefits.
hope this was helpful!
(I've posted this on the drupal forum too btw)
I'm converting the company websites to use Drupal, or at least trying to check that its going to be the best way forward. I have a background in PHP development, and I'm currently using the CakePHP framwork. I've built this site (not my design) and I can see how to replicate most of the functionality using Drupal, most likely using the CCK module.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yk6u8mt
As you can see from the homepage:
A user chooses a country.
The country is passed using an ajax call to a script that decides which phone is best based on 'in country' network coverage.
A div is shown recommending the visitor the best phone for that country.
I'm wondering how to go about this in Drupal, I'm definitely not after a step by step guide, I just want to know if this kind of thing is possible with Drupal, and what approach to use.
If someone can help that would be superb. Thanks.
Okay, so you've got a path you're defining in hook_menu, which is where your form is being presented - or else you've got it set up as a webform in a node, that could work too.
Either way, in your form you're going to be using AHAH - check out http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/developer--topics--forms_api_reference.html/6#ahah and http://drupal.org/node/348475 .
Basically, you're going to define another path in hook_menu that's of type MENU_CALLBACK, and which will receive the country as input, and then will return the div that you'll display on the screen.
One core example of AHAH that may be useful to you is where you're entering a password and it lets you know if the password is secure enough - check that out.
Edit: There's also some good examples at http://drupal.org/project/examples.
I would look into using CCK and views. you can set up filters for the views. If filters don't work, you have the ability to include php code. I have also successfully added jquery code in the header of a view through which I was then able to have my view filtered by what is typed in a text box.
Coming from CakePHP using Drupal is a pain in the a** - even more for developers.
It's application structure might be designed to ease extensibility but this only means you have a system to enable your own plugins and themes.
While modules are basically the M+C-part the themes are the V-part of an MVC-application. The problem is that this seperation is not very strict in Drupal - in fact you have to break it sometimes in order to make things work (e.g. you have to include a theme_mymodule_myfunction() into your module as default output which you then can override with your theme using mytheme_mymodule_myfunction() ) And don't even bother looking for classes ( see http://drupal.org/node/547518 ).
Also there is no real link from a module to a theme. On many occations this is a good thing as you can switch modules and themes seperatly without creating a problem. For application builders coming from CakePHP (or any other framework) you often feel a lack of "wholesomeness" - you create parts for a base software and have to live with it's drawbacks.
IMHO I wouldn't recommend this step. Drupal is fine if you have to manage a website and might add a few modules to add neccessary value (image gallery etc.) but I definetly don't recommend it as a base for a customized web-app.
I downloaded GraffitiCMS the other day(now open source and free), and like a lot of what I see, but what I really want to use it for, is to add CMS capabilities to an existing asp.net database/application.
Without getting bogged down with all the details of my app, can someone give me the basic 'approach' that should be taken to add custom content to Graffiti; content that won't be a 'post'?
I've seen for example, how to add custom-widgets to Graffiti - basically inherit from the widget class, compile your dll and plop it into the correct directory and it becomes part of the system. Is there a way to do something similar for the main content areas?
For simplicity sake, pretend I have a non-graffiti database with gig's of data that I want to display on the website using standard asp.net grid's and forms. I realize I could just go in and hack apart the source code to integrate my existing app, but that is likely not the correct approach.
Not looking for a complete solution her, just a pointer and what areas to investigate...thanks.
If you check out the latest source of Graffiti (or the 1.3 branch that was recently created), support was added to put widgets anywhere you want on any page. There is a new chalk function - $macros.Widget - that provides you with this ability. Dan Hounshell wrote a blog post on how you can use this new functionality:
http://danhounshell.com/blog/graffiti-cms-1-3-add-a-widget-anywhere-in-a-view-with-new-widget-macro/
If you're looking for something different than that, just let me know - we're working to make Graffiti even better for situations just like you are currently in.
What we have done to be able to integrate Graffiti CMS with our current ASP.NET projects is to create a post in Graffiti called "hidden" and then with our standard .ASPX pages we call a class in our Render Override that pulls the "hidden" post (ie: site.com/hidden/) and uses the header and footer to wrap the Graffiti theme around our custom .ASPX page. We use some HTML comments in the "hidden" post to be able to parse the header and the footer. It is kind of a hack, but has worked out really well for us.
I think you're trying to put the cart before the horse - depending on the size and amount of functionality, I would be looking to rebuild it after learning the development platform of my CMS system of choice.
I'm pretty much in the same boat right now. I have avoided Graffiti because I have to learn "Chalk" (whatever that is) and Umbraco (using XSLT for layouts is retarded). So far, this leaves me with Sitefinity at the top of my list and Telerik have just pulled the free version!
I may end up grabbing a very basic CMS which is easier to customize. I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but it may give you some food for thought :-)