Implementing Age Verification

It’s pretty straightforward to have them both in the same package. Let’s say your package is called “age_verifier”. So you’d have a folder called age_verifier that goes in system/expressionengine/third_party/. In there you’d just put your extension and module. So your folder contents would look something like:

ext.age_verifier.php    //class Age_verifier_ext
mod.age_verifier.php    //class Age_verifier
upd.age_verifier.php    //class Age_verifier_upd
mcp.age_verifier.php    //class Age_verifier_mcp

Then, you’d just be sure to install the extension and the module under the Addons tab.

After an afternoon (and evening) of tinkering, I think I finally have a handle on the separation between extensions and modules.

Hopefully, this will be my final question.

How do I go about setting up views for my module? And how do I point the form I’ll create for users to input their age at the module action that will parse the form, and check their age? (Is there an example anywhere that I might have missed?)

I have a library that I’ve included to do the actual checking, and provide a list of countries around the world. Hopefully, using this data in my form view will be fairly straightforward.

Views are meant for the control panel only. You’d make a views folder in your third_party/your_package_name folder and add your view files there.

If you want to do stuff on the front end, the usual means is by template tags. So let’s say you had a method in your mod file called age_verification_form:

class Age_verifier {
    public function age_verification_form()
    {
        $this->EE =& get_instance();

        $this->EE->load->helper('form');

        $output = $this->EE->functions->form_declaration_data(array(
            'hidden_fields' => array(
                'ACT' => $this->EE->functions->fetch_action_id(__CLASS__, 'age_verification_submit')
            ),
        ));

        $output .= $this->EE->TMPL->tagdata;

        $output .= form_close();

        return $output;
    }

    public function age_verification_submit()
    {
        $this->EE->load->library('your_custom_age_verification_lib');

        $this->EE->your_custom_age_verification_lib->verify($this->EE->input->post('age'));
        //etc.
    }
}

This would correspond with the template tag:

{exp:age_verifier:age_verification_form}
    <input type="text" name="age">
    <input type="submit">
{/exp:age_verifier:age_verification_form}

You’ll notice in the module’s form method I used the function fetch_action_id. This is how the form knows which method to trigger upon submission. It looks up the corresponding “action” in the exp_actions table. Which means, in your installation file (the upd file), you’ll have to be sure to actually install the action into the exp_actions table:

public function install()
{
    $this->EE->db->insert('actions', array('class' => 'Age_verifier', 'method' => 'age_verification_submit'));

    return TRUE;
}

Whew.