Thread

Hi team,

I have built a standalone form which submits data to a weblog. In this example the title is irrelevant and therefore could be anything at all but because a weblog entry requires a title I need to fill it. Ideally I would like to dynamically populate the title field based on input information or turn it off for that matter - is that possible?

To give you an example:

I have a form which looks like this:

Title

      <input type="text" name="title" id="title" value="{title}" size="50" maxlength="100"></p>
      
      {custom_fields}
      {if required}* {/if}{field_label}


      {if textarea}
      <textarea name="{field_name}" dir="{text_direction}" cols="50" rows="{rows}">{field_data}</textarea>
      {/if}

      {if textinput}
      <input type="text" dir="{text_direction}" name="{field_name}" value="{field_data}" maxlength="{maxlength}" size="50">
      {/if}

      {if pulldown}
      <select name="{field_name}">
      {options}<option value="{option_value}"{selected}>{option_name}</option>{/options}
      </select>
      {/if}

      {if date}
      <input type="text" name="{field_name}" value="{field_data}" maxlength="{maxlength}" size="50">
      {/if}

      {if relationship}
      <select name="{field_name}">
      {options}<option value="{option_value}"{selected}>{option_name}</option>{/options}
      </select>
      {/if}
      {/custom_fields}

How can I go about doing this? Would the following work?

<input type="hidden" name="title" id="title" value="field_ft_36" size="50" maxlength="100" /></p>

Kind regards,
Special Kay

<input type="hidden" name="title" id="title" value="field_ft_36" size="50" maxlength="100" /></p>

I’m pretty sure that won’t work, but my SAEF toolkit module does include this functionality and a lot more. PM if you’re interested in testing it when it’s ready.

Robin created a small extension that enables auto population of the title field from an input field, see this post.

@Paul - thank you for the extension matey - have you used it before?
It works well until you change the fields order on the form then it breaks… any ideas?

@guru24 - PM when your module is ready for testing buddy, i’d be more than happy to support you.

Yes, I’ve been using it on a site for the last year without any problems.
Not sure what you mean about changing the field order. Once you set the field_id_(number) it shouldn’t make any difference which order the fields are in the form.

I use it on a booking form for an activity course, where I add the name they input to a reference number of the course they are booking. The reference number is also a hidden field that gets it’s input from a weblog field that wraps around the input form.

@Paul - you were right as the orders have nothing to do with the field ID - I assumed they did while testing the extension. I have one more question for you - I also have another page on my site which a selected number of users can ‘edit’ the entry and I am using a plugin called ‘Form_Helper’. It appears that the automatic generation of the title is conflicting with the editing of the page on submission. Is this something that you have come across?

I don’t use the Form_Helper plugin, so not sure where the conflict arises.

I always give users (that are allowed to publish or edit) access to the EE control panel.
It always seems better to use a method that has had a lot of thought go into its design rather than me hack something together. But I don’t have a problem revealing that EE is being used, so don’t need to hide it.