FormBuilder / FormBrowser

[sjg]

Psych!

After literally hundreds of hours of development, this is actually to announce the release of the 0.1 betas for both FormBuilder and FormBrowser. Both require CMS MS 1.0-svn.

FormBuilder Features:

• Supports the most-used features of FeedbackForm, while fixing many of the most egregious bugs
• Fully Templated
• Accessible-forms using default templates
• Forms can require user validation (via email)
• Forms can be saved into database
• Support for CMS 1.0-svn events

FormBrowser Features

• Allows browsing of form records saved by Form Builder
• Templated list view
• Templated detail view
• Optionally require admin approval of records before they're displayed
• Optionally allows users to add records
• Optionally allows users to edit records
• Optionally allows users to delete records
• Admin side allows add, edit, delete records
• Variable number of records displayed per page in list view
• Support for CMS 1.0-svn events

Both FormBuilder and FormBrowser have had some testing, but should be considered beta at best. They're fiendishly complicated, and I'm not very smart, so errors will have inevitably crept in.

Please report errors in the tracker!

When I started these guys back at the beginning of last November, I thought they'd be released by the end of 2005. With this kind of schedule slippage, I should be eligible for government projects!

I'm currently kinda overwhelmed by work, but I plan to roll out at least a few bug-fix releases over the rest of the Summer as the reports come in. But at the moment, I'm going to have a celebratory beer.

Thanks,
___Samuel___

[djprozac]

Cool! Nice work. Can't wait till 1.0 gets released so we can check it out.

[dont]

Tnx,

ButI get a problem with this module.
When I upload all the file's I get this message
in de ADMIN - MODULE Section
Minimum CMSMS Version Required: 1.0-svn


?

I use the CMS Made Simple 0.13 "Canary" version

[dont]

Why you don't make it combatible with the version 0.13

[calguy1000]

There are significant features in 1.0 that formbuilder and formbrowser use, including events and the new true adodb-lite interface that backporting to 0.13 may not be that easy.  As well, the XML DTD has changed so not even the XML files will be compatible.  I am doing this with my modules as well, all of them will have new releases timed for about when 1.0 is released. 

I'm just hoping there'll be enough people out there testing 1.0-beta1 when it comes out (real soon now).  that we can get through most of these bugs all in one shot.

The 1.0 cycle will be a bit longer than many of the other beta cycles, but that is because of the significant number of improvements that all need to be tested thoroughly.

[psy]

Hi

Great concept and am trying it out.  Couple of questions....

1.  Am a bit confused about the "type" field.  Is it that the same field data can have multiple destinations, eg a text box called 'name' could appear on the form page and on submit, be saved to a database table and emailed to the user?  If this is the case, then there is a problem with the up/down arrows in the field list on the FormBuilder->Main tab.

2.  What is FormBrowser? The Help talks about it as though it's a separate module but nothing shows in the Modules list.

3.  Any ideas when linking it with Front-End Users will be available?

Keep up the good work!
Cheers
psy

[Elijah Lofgren]

2.  What is FormBrowser? The Help talks about it as though it's a separate module but nothing shows in the Modules list.

It can be downloaded from here: http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/formbrowser 

[Hare]

Are there any ways to make the module support international characters? I have a field that has Ä-char and I haven't found a way to pass it to the actual email-message (the character is replaced by a question-mark in the variable and cannot be used).

The best solution that I can think of would be that a user could assign a custom label to each field if he/she wishes to do so. That way international users could use the special chars in the label and make the actual input and it's variable compatible with smarty and php. An easier solution woud be that FormBuilder would just convert ä->a etc. Thoughts?

Otherwise the module is close to perfect.

EDIT: I just realised that html-entities work just fine. ä -> & a u m l ; etc

EDIT2: I just noticed that if I change the order of form-items some show duplicates and some are missing. Already installed the module again but the problem still exists. (cmsms 1.02).

[Caspar]

Hi again, Samuel,
hi Calguy and you all,

Fb/Fbr work fine in my CMSMS 1.0.2. test area. Thank you for that piece of gold!
I happen to have a few questions for future use/features of the module. Although I shall continue searching other discussions I'll post them here, too:

1. Emailing from out of the admin section to an email address stored in the database: Is a feature like that on the schedule already? I understand I could just create a form in my frontend for single emails, but I was thinking about newsletters and such. Is a combination of Fb/Fbr with NMS planned for the future?
2. External use of the database: Can the data stored in the database be used by external (desktop-) applications such as OpenOffice?
3. Security: Is there an easy way to include the Captcha module into FormBuilder forms? The email verification is excellent, but I was looking for a way to simply create a safe contact form for users who don't have their email account at hand.
EDIT: Found your post http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... l#msg30940, look forward to it!

Thank you again,
Cas

[cnymike]

Psych!

After literally hundreds of hours of development, this is actually to announce the release of the 0.1 betas for both FormBuilder and FormBrowser. Both require CMS MS 1.0-svn.

Can you, or someone, please provide a tar.gz version of Form Browser... I am unable to get permissions on my shared server to allow me to use XML versions of modules. Thank you.

[Caspar]

Can you, or someone, please provide a tar.gz version of Form Browser

Sorry, can't upload a tar right here due to upload restrictions (file types). Do you have an FTP account to upload it to? Email address will do also.

Regards,
Caspar

[cyberman]

I am unable to get permissions on my shared server to allow me to use XML versions of modules.

You can use a local server like xampp from apachefriends.org for it. There you will have ful file and permission control .

[Hare]

I am unable to get permissions on my shared server to allow me to use XML versions of modules.

You can use a local server like xampp from apachefriends.org for it. There you will have ful file and permission control .

Even better, use a virtual machine. Leaves your main OS nice and clean. Vmware and Microsofts VirtualPC are free and work perfectly. There are plenty of prebuilt machines (LAMP) that you can just boot and start using.

[cnymike]

OK, I'm on a Mac first of all.

I downloaded MAMP and miraculously got it up and running. I installed CMSMS 1.0.5 and easily able to download and install the XML versions of Form Builder and Form Browser.

Next I copied the From Builder and Form Browser folders over to my shared server installation of CMSMS 1.0.5

When I then went into Admin-Extensions-Modules and attempted to Install Form Builder, again I got the error

You need the "Modify Forms" permission to perform that operation.

So I go into Group Permissions for the Group Admiin and there is no Modify Forms permissions in the list.

[Greg]

Remove line 10 from method.install.php in the modules/FormBuilder folder

Code: Select all

if (! $this->CheckAccess()) exit;