Zikula Community

• ccandreva
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Sep 22, 2005
  • Last visit: May 20, 2010
  • Posts: 292

  Posted: Mar 02, 2011 - 05:31 AM

  From the DBUtil thread, Robert commented:
  
  

  Quote

  I'm not sure what your plans are with FormExpress, but I've recently had the pleasure of working on a large site which uses FormExpress together with feproc to automate some things and I must admit, that even though I'm generally not dumb, decyphering how things work took a long time and was anything but easy; as a matter of fact, I'm still shaky as to how some things work even though I've spent a large amount of time looking at that code

  
  
  It's good to hear someone is using it, and I'm glad to hear it was a pleasure. I would like to make clear though that I did not write FormExpress or feproc, I only took them over.
  
  My goal so far has been to keep it working for my clients, until I had some time for forward development. All I had really done was update it to not require legacy support enabled, and use Smarty templates instead of printing HTML directly. Right now I am working on switching over from direct SQL statements to using DBUtil.
  
  After that: The form edit screen could benefit from Ajax, and the method of specifying actions is not easy.
  
  What version did you look at, before or after my changes ?

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• rgasch
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
  • Registered: Jan 05, 2003
  • Last visit: May 28, 2010
  • Posts: 776

  Posted: Mar 03, 2011 - 10:21 PM

  Hi,
  
  please don't take this the wrong way, it is in no way meant as an attack or anything of that sort, but my use of the word 'pleasure' was entirely sarcastic. There are 2 issues here:
  
  1) Editing a large/complex form is very cumbersome. As you say, this could be alleviated through the use of Ajax to make things smoother and less click intensive.
  2) I will openly admit that form processing as done through feproc is a mystery to me. I've managed to somehow maintain and extend the existing installation but the complexity of this is daunting. While I don't want to come over as overly self assured, if this is a mystery to me, it probably also is so to most other people. So IMHO the form processing part needs to be rethought to make it simpler and more transparent.
  
  I have no doubt that the combination of FormExpress and feproc is extremely powerful but so far I have failed to really understand it and looking at the code hasn't been much help.
  
  Greetings
  Robert

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• espaan
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Aug 23, 2003
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 1428

  Posted: Mar 04, 2011 - 01:16 AM

  I have used it extensively in teh past and it was quite some work to get it going. I have never used feproc with Pagesetter for example. I'm now using Formicula for most of my forms and that works for me.
  If I were to do stuff now that needed the kind of formxpress/feproc work I think I would go for pagemaster/clip and make the forms by hand in HTML.
  
  --
  campertoday.nl, Module development, Dutch Zikula Community

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• ccandreva
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Sep 22, 2005
  • Last visit: May 20, 2010
  • Posts: 292

  Posted: Mar 06, 2011 - 05:46 AM

  No offence possible, again because I didn't write it. I've just tried to keep it working in new versions.
  
  I don't see 'us' as site builders as the target audience for FormExpress. Rather, it would be something we use to give our clients the ability to make forms on their own. An example would be a school site, where the school secretary i using it to make up web forms instead of sending home permission slips, "I will / won't attend" sort of things.
  
  Having said that, I have used it with Pagesetter in the past and for a few simple things. For a simple enough form it beat writing code.

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