questions questions

So many questions, Largely about the use of the edit facility...not the wizard.
The General heading : 'Form tag attachment example "on submit return Validate ..." Is this in addition to the validate provided?
Enable Mambots ..what is this about ?

SEtUP EMAILS : Dynamic xxx More explanation and/or an example please.
FORM CODE: On SUbmit before/after email...is this also before/after data storage ?
FORM URLS: Redirect URL Is this where 'system' goes to after acting on form ?
face-meh-blankubmit URL I take it this is as in <form asction = xxx
DB CONNECTION : Is it any any table provided it has some fields to match the fields of the form. ie are they inserted by field name ?
AUTOGENERATED CODE : Form field names/field types/datafieldnames can I freely alter these ?? without disaster.
CHRONOFORMS HANDLE MY ARRAYS : Need lots more explanation.
DATAVIEW FIELDS: Need more explanation.
VALIDATION : looks ok but see comment under general.
PLUGINS: Very interesting but more information required. What is significance of digit shown.
RUN ORDER: What effect does this have ?
EXRTA FORM CODE: In 4 blocks ... looks as though we could write the whole system here !

So Basically what this excellent extension needs is lots more examples. and/or an extensive guide document.

--
dave

Hi Dave,

The General heading : 'Form tag attachment example "on submit return Validate ..." Is this in addition to the validate provided?

Ignore this unless you want to add an extra attribute to the <form . . .> tag. The most common example is to add enctype='multi-part/formdata' for form uploads. You'd only need to use the validation example to trigger special custom validation (the tooltip pre-dates ChronoForms including validation of any kind).

Enable Mambots ..what is this about ?

This lets you enable 'other' Joomla Mambots/PlugIns inside your form code. Rarely used in my experience.

SEtUP EMAILS : Dynamic xxx More explanation and/or an example please.

The Dynamic fields allow you to use answers from the form submission in the Email Setup, e.g. if you had an 'email' field you could use a Dynamic To with the value email (no quotes or brackets) to send an email to the submitter.

FORM CODE: On SUbmit before/after email...is this also before/after data storage ?

OnSubmit Before is before Email sending (but after field value substitution) and before data Storage; it will only execute with Send Emails turned on. OnSubmit After is by default After Emails sending and before Data Storage, it will always execute. You can change the settings with some switches: on the Autogenerated Code tab you can set the Data Storage to be before or after (default) the Email send; and on the Run Order tab you an set the sequence for OnSubmit After, Data Storage and Plugin execution. For completeness, any OnSubmit URL is excuted first and ChronoForms will do nothing else; and a ReDirect URL is executed last.

FORM URLS: Redirect URL Is this where 'system' goes to after acting on form ?

Yes, if this is left blank then a page is displayed which will show any HTML+PHP in the OnSubmit boxes.

:Submit URL I take it this is as in <form asction = xxx

Yes, if this is set the form will be redirected to this URL and ChronoForms will never see the results and will not be able to send email, store data or do anything else.

DB CONNECTION : Is it any any table provided it has some fields to match the fields of the form. ie are they inserted by field name ?

Yes, exactly - Joomla has some code that lets you load a table object and bind data to it from an array where the names match.

AUTOGENERATED CODE : Form field names/field types/datafieldnames can I freely alter these ?? without disaster.

You can no longer edit this textbox directly as ChronoForms re-writes the code on save. You can change the field names in your form and database tables and ChronoForms uses the Joomla 'bind' method to match up field names from the form and database table. It the names don't match the field won't be written. You can freely change field types provided that they are consistent with the database record types i.e. you can't save a string in an integer field; if you have the appropriate box ticked ChronoForms will do its best to handle Array values for storage.

Note: it is courting disaster to use this capability to save data to any of the Joomla core files unless you know exactly wha you are doing.

CHRONOFORMS HANDLE MY ARRAYS : Need lots more explanation.

It's is often convenient to get an array returned from a form - from a list of radio or checkboxes, or a multiple select drop-down. The array can't be saved directly into the database - if you try all that is saved is 'Array'. If this box is checked ChronoForms will convert the array into a comma separated list before sending emails and storage. If you can't use a csv, or you have a multi-dimensional array then you'll need to process this separately.

DATAVIEW FIELDS: Need more explanation.

Never really used it; ChronoForms includes a simple data viewer and I think this adds a little control over which fields are displayed and which field is used as the key (could be wrong here though).

VALIDATION : looks ok but see comment under general.

See above.

PLUGINS: Very interesting but more information required. What is significance of digit shown.

1, 2, 3, simply mark the execution sequence. 1 executes before 2 . . .

RUN ORDER: What effect does this have ?

See above.

EXRTA FORM CODE: In 4 blocks ... looks as though we could write the whole system here !

I've absolutely no idea what they do. But the contents are stored in the database and are available in the form parameters. I guess you could load some semi-fixed data in there and recall it for use in the Form HTML.

Hope that helps a bit.

Bob

Thanks Bob For your valuable thoughts.
I shall load these into notepad and lie in the sun and digest them. As with any developing system there are bits that were useful but are no longer essential.
Thanks again.
Dave