Chaos tool suite's Form wizard tool

Who am I? oadaeh d.o UID: 4649 (10 years 1 month) Mass Contact, Basic webmail Live in: Las Vegas, NV Organizer of the Drupal User Group of Las Vegas: Ask away – don't wait until the end

Audience survey Who has ever attempted to use the Form wizard tool? Who has ever attempted multi-step forms in Drupal using another method? What are the other methods you have used?

Other Examples

What it is What is the Form wizard tool? It is a way to make multi-step forms less difficult What are multi-step forms? A series of forms culminating in a single or group of actions

What it is not What the Form wizard tool is not A point-and-click GUI interface to set up a multi- step forms wizard

How Drupal does it Drupal's FAPI wants to own the process Form callback builds entire form Submit callback saves entire form Standard multistep means having entire form, only showing part of it, doing weird things in submit

Drupal's FAPI Form Page callback Render Save drupal_goto()

You must unlearn what you have learned You cannot be successful with multi-step forms, unless you divorce the form presentation from the data Your form doesn't load, save, or own your data Your form is a view in the MVC sense; it is a view of the data only

Paradigm Shift Wizard Page callback Render Save drupal_goto() Form

Broad overview (the parts of the wizard) Entry point into main function (hook_menu()) The main function, which defines and initiates the wizard The data, which is an object Object caching Form functions Callbacks – the wizard interacting functions

Start at the beginning Install and enable: Chaos tools suite Only the main Ctools module needs to be enabled Advanced Help Only if you want the documentation Your module Contains you form wizard code

Ctools' Object Cache A non-volatile, temporary cache stored in the database ctools_object_cache_set($obj, $name, $cache) $cache = ctools_object_cache_get($obj, $name, $skip_cache = FALSE) ctools_object_cache_clear($obj, $name)

Ctools' Form wizard tool $output = ctools_wizard_multistep_form( $form_info, $step, $form_state );

The Forms Standard FAPI forms The data they operate on comes from $form_state Can have validate functions Must have submit functions To save the data from $form_state[‘values’] to $form_state[‘whateveryoucallyourcacheobject’]

The Callbacks Next: This function should take the submitted data and cache it for later use by the finish callback. Finish: This function should finalize all data. Cancel: This function should clean up any data that is cached. Return: This is often the same as the finish callback. Common: Defaults to: $form_info['id']. _ if it doesn't exist. Params: &$form_state.

Demo and Code

Other Considerations AJAX The cancel and back buttons with required fields Anonymous users Auto caching ($form_info['auto cache']) Next and finish callbacks not required Unless you want to change what the next form will be in the next callback, which is set thusly: $form_state[‘triggering element’][‘#next’] = $new_step;

Resources wizard-multistep-form-using-ajax-drupal-7 wizard-example multistep-registration-form-drupal-7-using- ctools control.de/en/help/ctools/wizard

Resources 2 Documentation: Advanced help sites/all/modules/ctools/includes/wizard.inc Presentation: slides-and-example-code Extending the tool: -chaos-tools-wizard.html

Questions?