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Forms
Written by Mostafa Muhammad   

 

First off I’d like to thank everybody ,The Joomla! team for their confidence ,the blogs and everything ( Makes one feel important :P )

I'm really happy to see that the abstract article has received 7 thumbs up so far although it doesn't say much about the project :).

This is my first post here so I'll try to avoid going into the gory details, I'll just try to illustrate the rather brief abstract

The first thing I'd like to comment on is "Extensible, plugin-in based".

Now how does plugins fit into a Forms Component?

I'm currently proposing two types of plugins

1) Storage plugins

These plugins will handle the storage of records to various storage media "XML Files, XLS Files, Database, E-mail!, etc..", although I plan to implement only the database plugin "and a simple file system plugin if time permits" during GSoC, but this plugin-based design will allow 3rd party developers (3PDs) to store record information in whatever format they like.

 

2) Form element plugins

Simply put, these are the HTML form elements "select, input, radio, etc...”.

Now you must be wondering "why would these simple things be called plugins anyway?"

To answer this I'll need to go into details about the form design environment which will inevitably lead to lots of technical details but to brief things I just would like to allow 3PDs to create their own custom fields, like CAPTCHA elements, IP address entry fields, Date fields, etc..  , these fields doesn't behave like normal, innocent, everyday form element , they are not simply one tag, "a CAPTCHA  element ,for instance,  is at least an image + textbox", I want to build a framework that allows 3PDs to define "Custom form fields" and control everything part of their behavior

I started this post with the intention of making things more clear, but I think I just made them more ambiguous :P , anyway don't worry, I'll go over this part in full boring details in later posts Insha'Allah

 

That's it for "plug-in based", the next thing I'd like to comment on is "Single Screen form design".

When I first used a forms component on 1.0.x , I was kinda disappointed, I thought that I'll just need to go through a single screen to get the job done, but that didn't happen.

What I'm trying to do here is allow the user to configure all aspects of the form in a single, user-friendly screen and once the user clicks "Save form” that’s it, the form is all done.

I know you must be thinking "WYSIWYG" , well , although this single screen approach can be achieved without WYSIWYG but I think I'll go the WYSIWYG way, I'm still discussing with my Mentor , Mr. Ray :) , how far I can go with WYSIWYG , should I go for a Full blown, GUI Editor  or something like this.

That’s too much talk in one post; I’ll talk more about “Nested forms and compliance with accessibility standards in the next post.

 

 

 

 

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6 Comments

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  1. @Robby,@Nate Thank you for the feedback, I've started working on the drag and drop environment ahead of time because I thought it would be the most time consuming part of the project, I might have something to show off very soon so stay tuned :) .
  2. Jot is beautiful! I love the idea of having a simple drag and drop option for a form yet it would be deep enough to do pretty much anything
  3. I can only agree with Amy, JOT is great. If you could make something like this in Joomla... wow. Like Wilco said: a killer app for joomla. Happy coding !
  4. Thank you Wilco and Amy, Your comments are most encouraging :)
  5. I *love* Jot. That is a very easy form building environment. If you produced something that was as easy to use as Jot, it would be HUGELY powerful for site developers as they construct Web sites. Agree with Wilco - this project holds great potential. Go Mostafa and Ray!
  6. hi Mostafa,

    Great to see you blogging here. Your SoC project is pretty interesting and could be one of those killer solutions for Joomla! really looking forward to see the progression of you project, and with Ray as mentor you have a very skilled mentor guiding you!

    Wilco

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