Building forms and applications with Joomla! 3

Presented by Tim PlummerSydney JUG May 2013

Have you had bad experiences with forms & applications in Joomla?

Or has it all been sunshine and lollypops?

What if a form extension used Joomla standards?

• No unique interface• More familiar and easy to use• Template & media overrides

What if your unique configuration actually generated Joomla code?

Form vs Application• Form– Simple requirements – data entry– Fields to complete, and submit– Response captured in email/database

• Application– Breaking into multiple steps - only show user what

they need to see– Flexible workflow– Reporting– Permissions– Audit trail

Standard Field Types

• Text• Textarea• Radio• Checkbox

• Dropdown

• Date

Mobile responsive and accessible

Captcha to prevent spam

Single page form

Multipage form

Multipage tab

Attachment uploading

Rating question type

SQL lookup

• Populate drop down options via an SQL lookup

Show/hide questions based on user input

Show/hide questions based on user input

Prepopulate data on the form

• Append &fieldname=yourdata to your URL to pre-populate any field

Results graphically represented

Dynamic reporting with PDF generation

Export to Excel

Front end question management

Front end question management

Come back and finish the form later

Built in content version history

Customise look with CSS overrides

• Same form with different CSS applied

Layout overrides

• For example, to move position of CAPTCHA

Email Templates

Email triggers

• Initial save

• When a field changes

• When a field is a specific value

Email invites

• Unique URLs {uurl} in email invites encrypt username (like Akeeba download id), and pre-populate Name and Email

All this in one extension?

Can anyone guess?

Version 2.0.0

System Requirements

• Joomla 3.2.3 or greater• FOF (in core)• Bootstrap & jQuery (in core)• GD Image Library (provided

by most web hosts)

Four simple steps

• 1 – create a category• 2 – add questions to that category• 3 – add a menu item• 4 – (optional) create email template

Demo time…

I did promise a special bonus

For those that didn’t come tonight

• Sorry, you missed out on the special bonus … you snooze, you lose!

Questions?

Tim Plummerwww.tamlynsoftware.com

@bfsurvey