Drupal 6 Forms API Screencast

For those with slow computers, or if you want to save it and watch it later:

MPEG4 Video (.mp4):
http://blip.tv/file/get/Vordude-IntroToDrupal6FormsAPI891.MP4

Flash Video (.flv) :
http://blip.tv/file/get/Vordude-IntroToDrupal6FormsAPI891.flv

Thanks so much for putting the time into this!

Your screencast and code are very helpful.

If I have already created my database fields in CCK. I have watched your tutorial & the API Forms tutorial, yet I still can not figure out how I indicate which textfield should update which database field?
Tami

this really is good - even though everyone says drupal is easy to update - people need different methods of explanation to help them get started

more screencasts would be most welcome

many thanks

djax

First of all cool tutorial, extremely helpful. One problem I'm having is getting my form to submit. I'm writing an e-commerce page using ubercart. The form I created is supposed to add a product to cart. Here is what I have so far.

I'm using the following to render the form, in my node-product.tpl.php file.

Could anyone help or point in the right direction, I'm really stuck on this one.

Thanks

Hi,
Great tutorial! absolutely a learning experience!
Would love a tutorial like this showing form - to node save.

greetings,
Martijn

Thanks to this tutorial I have a working form in my module. Now, once I do some database calls in quiz_form_submit, how do I get the results to display on the same page below the form? Do I use hook_view? hook_load? Any links to examples would be swell!

I am trying to put the values to the DB but it is not working for me. I am doing an INSERT query on the quiz_form_submit as follows:

function quiz_form_submit ($form_id, &$form_state) {
$id = 1;
$name = $form_state['values']['name'];
$toast = $form_state['values']['toast'];

$result = db_queryd("INSERT INTO {form_intro}(id, name, toast) VALUES (%d, '%s', '%s')", $id, $name, $toast);

if ($result ) {
  dsm($id, $name, $toast);
  $output = "Hi " . $name . ", Do you like toast?" . $toast;
  $output .= t(' this info was added to the Database.');
} else {
  dsm("DB write FAILED<br>");
}
//return db_result($result);

}

All I get is a blank page :-(

This is my install:

function form_intro_schema(){
$schema = array();

$schema['form_intro'] = array(
'description' => t('Contain the form intro DB part.'),
'fields' => array(
'id' => array(
'type' => 'int',
'unsigned' => TRUE,
'not null' => TRUE,
'default' => 0,
'description' => t('Form intro record id'),
),

  'name' => array(
'type' => 'char',
'length' => 40,
    'not null' => TRUE,
    'description' => t('The name of the user'),
  ),

  'toast' => array(
    'type' => 'int',
'length' => 1,
    'not null' => TRUE,
    'description' => t('Do you like Toast?'),
  ),
),
'primary key' => array(
   'id',
),

);

drupal_set_message($schema);
return $schema;
}

/**
* Implementation of hook_install
* perform initial setup database tasks.
*/
function form_intro_install() {
if (!db_table_exists('form_intro')){
drupal_install_schema('form_intro');
}
}

/**
* Implementation of hook_unistall().
*
* Perform initial clean-up tasks.
*/
function form_intro_uninstall() {
if ( db_table_exists('form_intro')) {
drupal_uninstall_schema('form_intro');
}
}

Thanks very much for the excellent screencast! I was able to download the flv file. Once that file was processed with Handbrake into an mp4 file, we were able to watch it on our PCs.

The newly processed mp4 file is 150mb. Please let me know if you would like me to upload the mp4 file to some location in order to correct the issue on blip.tv.

Thanks to this excellent tutorial, I created my first form and my first module!

My question is, how do I display the form on any page I want? Here is what I've done so far.

I have a classified ads site. I created the module so that I could include a small contact form in the node of every single node page in the site. However I can't get it to display.

Here is what I need.
1) show my form on every single page I want to show it on.
2) I need the form to work and be visible even if the user is anonymous.

Here is how I was trying to accomplish this.
1) create a module with the form, which I did successfully, and it shows up and works fine on the page it's supposed to.
2) I wrote a function called display_form() which simply returned drupal_get_form(contact_poster_form)
3) I put the function on the pages I needed it to display on, however, it will not show up.

Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
the following is the function I have in my template.php file, and the one I am adding to my templates:

function display_contact_form() {
return drupal_get_form(contact_poster_form);
}

the following is my code for the contact_poster.module:

function contact_poster_menu() {
$items = array();

$items['contact_poster'] = array(
'title' => t('Contact Poster Module'),
'page callback' => 'contact_poster_page',
'access arguments' => array('access content'),
'type' => MENU_SUGGESTED_ITEM,
);

return $items;
}

function contact_poster_page() {
return drupal_get_form('contact_poster_form');
}

function contact_poster_form($form_state) {
$form = array();

$form['email'] = array(
'#type' => 'textfield',
'#title' => t('Email'),
'#required' => TRUE,
);

$form['message'] = array(
'#type' => 'textarea',
'#title' => 'Message',
'#rows' => 4,
'#required' => TRUE,
);

$form['nodetitle'] = array(
'#type' => 'hidden',
'#value' => $node->title,
);

$form['submit'] = array(
'#type' => 'submit',
'#value' => 'Send',
);

return $form;
}

function contact_poster_form_validate($form_id, &$form_state) {
//check if the email field is valid
if(isset($form_values['values']['email'])) {
if (!valid_email_address($form_values['values']['email'])) {
form_set_error('email', t('The e-mail address you specified is not valid.'));
}
}
}

function contact_poster_form_submit($form_id, &$form_state) {
$author = user_load(array('uid' => $node->uid));
$to = $author->mail;
$from = $form_state['values']['email'];
$body = $form_state['values']['message'];
$nodetitle = $form_state['values']['nodetitle'];

drupal_set_message(t('Your message has been successfully submitted.'));

$message = array(
'to' => $to,
'subject' => "Contact from your ad titled {$nodetitle}",
'body' => $body,
'headers' => array('From' => "{$from}"),
);

drupal_send_mail($message);

}

Coder (http://drupal.org/project/coder) -- a must have module for developers -- found a dozen or so minor errors like this in form_intro-module.text:

Line 23: Functions should be called with no spaces between the function name and opening parentheses

$items = array ();

Those errors were easily corrected and your module became a "suggested" menu item.

Then, by adding hook_block implementation(), a block was made available to Drupal. Of course one probably wouldn't implement a module as both a menu item and a block.

Anyway, here is the module with minimal commenting in order to save space.

form_intro.info

; $Id$
name = "form_intro"
description = "Makes simple form, that doesn't do much of anything."
package = "My Modules"
core = 6.x

form_intro.module

A few notes:

Please be certain to flush the menu cache after making changes to menu items. There are numerous way to flush the menu cache along with the other caches. I tend to use "Flush all caches" which is under the favicon in the Administration menu (http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu).

I'm certain I read somewhere -- I'm thinking either in "Pro Drupal Development", on the coding standards page (http://drupal.org/node/318), or in "Drupal 6 Module Development". I can't seem to locate the reference at this moment -- that the underscore (_) should not be used in module names. As such, the module would be better named formintro.info and formintro.module; both files being placed, of course, in sites/all/modules/formintro/

I hope this helps.

i have tried this on my local system but everytime i am trying to hit "http://localhost/drupal/quiz" its redirecting to "http://localhost/xampp/splash.php" i dont know why . can u guys please help me out.