Example of form processing module
Development and Programming
I’ve searched the forums and the web to find many people asking about form processing in ExpressionEngine with a control panel backend, and I usually see them being pointed towards the module development guide.
As this is asked so frequently, are there any actual examples of this set up anywhere? I can’t seem to find any. I have experience with CodeIgniter, but I would love an example of the functions for the Control Panel backend, what a form would look like in a template, the form processing function, etc. Even just a template with the basic functions and files that a module needs seems logical to have.
And just for the record, I do know of FreeForm and would prefer not to use it for this.
As a follow up, I found the RSVP module by Crescendo to be a perfect example for learning how to make a form processing module. http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/rsvp/
It creates forms within templates that write to the database and has control panel administration. I’d recommend this for anyone trying to figure out how to make this, but I personally think this type of module would be a much more useful example in the documentation than the “force download” module.
Ted,
I entirely agree that EE should have more robust documentation on module development. It’s an opportunity for some enterprising writers to publish an ebook, or even better, 3-4 modules that developers can download as model samples, with lots of documentation. And yes, a form-processing example would be much more useful to me, anyway.
I took your advice and downloaded http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/rsvp/ to checkout the code. It’s $19.00, but frankly i’d pay a lot more now that i realize how valuable it was to learning how do develop my module. It’s the perfect size and complexity for what I am doing. I simply could not have learned how to do it other than seeing an example like this one.
I also took the time to study CodeIgniter’s docs, since I never developed with the framework. That helped.
Thanks Ted for sharing your tools. It helped me greatly, and i’d encourage anyone else who is struggling (and it can be a struggle!) to learn module development to download modules and sift through code. It’s impressive, how EE is so elegantly customizable. I’m enjoying the learning now that i’m over this hill (knock on wood).
Ron
I too am building a form-processing module, but I don’t want to pay $19.00 for an example. Can anyone provide a link to a free EE form-processing module that I might use as a guide?
Currently, when submitting my module’s custom tab form, EE seems to entirely ignore my module’s publish_data_db function. I cannot even var_dump $params.
Anyone have any simple tips to offer? Thanks!
Maybe these two modules can help get the ideas flowing:
https://github.com/vmichnowicz/vwm_secure_files https://github.com/vmichnowicz/vwm_polls