Forums

Hi,

J1.5.25, Chrono V4.

I'm new to Chronoforms and have found the component to be perfect for my requirements. I've managed to get to grips with the simple stuff, but would now like to add some functionality to one of the forms.

I'd like to be able to create a Joomla Article from a form. I understand there is a way to do this using "Actions", but have been unable to find a walk-through explaining what I am supposed to do.

Can anyone advise, or point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Adam
PS - What I'd also like is the ability to post a form directly as a topic in Kunena forum. Is that at all possible?

Hi Adam,

Click the Form Wizard link, then the Actions tab; go to the Joomla! Functions action group and drag a Submit Article action into the form On Submit event.

Open the action configuration and check the list of boxes. The first tab asks you for the name sof the form inputs that will have the main article content; the second tab asks you if the form is published and the category it should go in.

Create a form with inputs that match the boxes on the first tab. If necessary you can use a Custom Code action before the Submit Article action to set values or process the form results in some way.

Posting to forums is tricky; often they have complex table structures and you have to get all the correct entries to avoid messing up the forum. If Kunena has an API - a published set of instructions for making remote posts - then it can probably be done; otherwise it means a *lot* of digging into their code to get it all working correctly.

Bob

Thank you so much for your prompt and helpful response!

I've followed your instructions and they all make sense. My initial problem was that I'd used the easy wizard to create the form, and the actions tab did not appear. Converting to Advanced solved that!

Now, before I post the form as an article, I need to combine a number of form fields, so that they can all be posted into the main body of the article. Pretty much like the way the email is created, using a table to combine and display everything.

I'm sorry to be a needy newbie: Can you advise how I can combine fields before they are added to the main content of the article?

No worries about the Kunena issue. It thought it might be difficult.

Cheers,

Adam

Hi Adam,

Use a Custom Code action before the Submit Article action and you can stitch together the data from the form into the final versions you need e.g.

<?php
$form->data['introtext'] = "<p>Some text {$form->data['some_input_name']} some more text <a href='{$form->data['some_other_input_name']}'>Link text</a></p><p>{$form->data['yet_another_input_name']} yet more boilerplate.</p>";
?>

Then put introtext into the introtext box in the Submit Article action.

Bob

Beautiful! Works perfectly.

Thanks so much for your help!

Adam

Ok, just found a teeny-weeny snag:

When I use the "Post to Article" action, the article is posted correctly, however the "start Publishing" date is 1999-11-30 00:00:00, which is obviously 12 years and 2 months ago!

This rather throws off the ordering of items, placement of articles in "latest items" modules etc.

Do you have any idea why this might be happening, and what I can do to fix it?

Thanks,

Adam

Hi Adam,

In that samd Custom Code box set a value for start_publishing

<?php
$form->data['start_publishing'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); 
?>

From memory - please check the correct column name from the table and he correct format string for the date.

Bob

Perfect!

It was "publish_up" by the way.

Is there mileage in adding that particular field to the submit_article.php file in the "submit article" action folder?

Finally, (I hope!) can I add a last action to redirect to the article just created? I'd like to hit "submit" and have it do all its things (email form data, then post form data to article) and finally redirect to that article itself.

Can I do that? The reason I want to do it is because I've found that the Kunena forum component will automatically post an article to a forum when the article is first read. I'd like to link to the article immediately after hitting "submit" on the form to get it posted automatically.

Cheers,

Adam

Have figured it out!

I added a redirect-url after the submit article action, that pointed to a category blog listing the article. This was sufficient to get Kunena to recognise the article and post it in a forum. I had to make sure that the Kunena "discuss" plug-in was set to add the discuss link to articles listed in category blogs.

It took a bit of tweaking and trial/error to get there, but it works now. Yeh!

Hi Adam

Well done. I did work this out for you but must have forgotten to click the Submit button :-(

In a Custom Code action after the Submit Article action add

<?php
$mainframe->redirect('index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id='.$form->data['article_id']);
?>

Bob

Hello,

Thanks for this great component, as we have been testing this for a few days now attempting to do exactly what is posted in this forum to add the posting to a Kunena category.
I am wondering if you can provide exact step by step instructions on how to do this? I have made the form and installed the Kunena discuss plug-in and the form is posting it to the blog section however there is not a subject title for some reason. And because of this it’s not posting to the forums. I get an error saying subject missing?

Once we have this working we will be purchasing the validation code, could that be why it’s not working?

Thanks for your help with this.

Alan

Hi Alan,

I don't know much about the Kunena end of this except what has been posted here. Does your saved artccle have a title OK?

Bob

Hi Alan,

I don't know much about the Kunena end of this except what has been posted here. Does your saved artccle have a title OK?

Bob

Hello,

No it’s not getting a title, I must have missed something, any idea what I have missed?

Thanks for your help!

Alan

Sorry to bother you but i still cant figure out how to get the title to show?

Thanks

Alan