= Database Form Extension for Radiant

The Database Form extension enables Radiant users to build form pages that
will save visitor responses to a database table. Those responses can then
be exported for consumption in some other application (CRM, etc).

Install the extension, run the rake radiant:extensions:database_form:migrate
task, and the rake radiant:extensions:database_form:update task. These
tasks will add the necessary database table to your Radiant installation
and copy over the JavaScript that's required for client-side validation.

Once you've done this, log into the Radiant admin and set the page type
of the page where you'll build the form to DatabaseFormPage. Then create
your form using tags. Here's an example of usage:

    <r:database:form name="requestinfo" redirect_to="/contact/thank-you">
      Name:<br/>
      <r:database:text name="name"/><br/>
      Email:<br/>
      <r:database:text name="email"/><br/>
      Primary Interest:<br/>
      <r:database:select name="primary_interest">
        <r:database:option name="work"/>
        <r:database:option name="fun!"/>
      </r:database:select><br/>
      <r:database:submit value="Submit"/>
      <r:database:reset value="Reset"/>
    </r:database:form>

As shown above, you can use the redirect_to attribute to specify where the
visitor should be redirected to after submitting the form.

The entire inventory of tags includes:

  <r:database:form name="" redirect_to="" validate="">...</r:database:form>
  <r:database:text name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:password name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:checkbox name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:hidden name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:textarea name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:radio name="" validate=""/>
  <r:database:radiogroup name="" validate="">...</r:database:radiogroup>
  <r:database:select name="" validate="">...</r:database:select>
  <r:database:option name=""/>
  <r:database:us_states/>
  <r:database:ca_provinces/>
  <r:database:countries/>
  <r:database:submit/>
  <r:database:reset/>
  
Note that most tags support client-side validation. Thanks to Andrew Tetlaw
for his spiffy Prototype-based validation JavaScript. If you wish to include
validation in your form, you must set the validate attribute in the form tag.
You can then choose from a variety of validation routines for the form
elements, including: required, validate-number, validate-digits, 
validate-alpha, validate-alphanum, validate-date, validate-email,
validate-url, validate-currency-dollar, validate-selection, and
validate-one-required. You'll also need to include prototype in your layout,
of course (IMPORTANT; without it validation won't work).

<r:database:form name="contact" validate="true">
  <r:database:text name="name" validate="required"/>
  <r:database:text name="email" validate="required validate-email"/>
</r:database:form>

If you care to, you can style these validations using CSS:

input.validation-failed, textarea.validation-failed {
        border: 1px solid #900;
        color: #900;
}
.validation-advice {
        margin: 5px 0;
        padding: 5px;
        background-color: #900;
        color: #FFF;
        font-weight: bold;
}

The Database Forms extension also adds a tab to Radiant's admin
interface which can be used to export user form data. You can select
by form name (the name you assigned to a form in its tag) and date
ranges. XML is the only supported export format at this time.

Maybe we'll sexy this up some day and make listings browsable through
the admin but the most common use case is probably exporting data, and
that's what we needed at the time, so it is what it is. If you'd like
to extend it, we definitely welcome submissions.

This extension is based on the Mailer extension by Matt McCray and 
(originally) Sean Cribbs. It was inspired by a post on SuperGloo's blog
http://code.supergloo.com/2007/12/12/radiant-cms-database-form-extension
but should be a bit more flexible than what was described there,
allowing you to add arbitrary forms at will without adding database 
tables (model attributes for the FormResponse model are serialized
and stored in a content text area).

Developed by Nick Plante for Ubikorp Internet Services. 
Tested on Radiant 0.6.4.

http://github.com/zapnap/database_form

http://blog.zerosum.org
http://www.ubikorp.com