Create form in frontend in a module

Question

Am creating a simple custom search , where users will search using a droplist of option , i have successfully created the module , however i do not know how to show the form in frontend and how to pass values to my helper file for validation , please help ! Below is my code

model(helper.php)

public static function getdata($catid)
    {
          //$catid1=17;
           $res=array();
           $categories = JCategories::getInstance('Content');
           $cat = $categories->get($catid);
           $children = $cat->getChildren();
           $res['FieldofStudy']=$children;

        return $res;
    }

View (tmpl/default.php) Which is form that shows droplist to send back to controller

            <select id="Field-of-Study" class="form-control">
                <?php foreach($res['FieldofStudy'] as $a){  ?>
                <option>
                <?php  echo $a->title ;  ?>
                </option>
                <?php } ?>
              </select>

Answer 1

Personally, I would do it like this:

Lets say you have a few form fields (for example, 2 inputs and a select box):

<form method="post" name="shout">

    <input name="myform[name]" type="text">

    <input name="myform[surname]" type="text">

    <select name="myform[study]" id="Field-of-Study" class="form-control">
        <?php foreach($res['FieldofStudy'] as $a) : ?>
            <option><?php echo $a->title; ?></option>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
    </select>

</form>

Notice I've used myform in the name="" attribute.

Now, in your mod_mymodule.php file, you can check if the post if set and get the entire post array from your form like so:

if (isset($_POST))
{
    $post = $app->input->post->get('myform', array(), 'array');

    // You can now access each field value using
    // $post['name']
    // $post['surname']
    // $post['study']
}

To put the post into a function in the helper.php, you first need to call the helper like so:

$helper = new ModMYMODULEHelper();

Then call the function from the helper

$helper->myfunction($post);

Hope this helps