How to use data gathered by Joomla Forms Extension

Question

I'm in the process of determining which forms builder extension to use while i'm planning a Joomla based website. Many of the free or paid plugins or extensions can seem to gather the data I need. My question is, once I've gathered the data, what options are there to manipulate the data?

What I want to do is once the data for a form is entered, analyze the data for particular choices and then kick off an email with a subset of that data contained in the email. The form should then be marked as "completed" or some sort of status indicating completion. I want this to be all automatic, obviously, running without human intervention.

I have programming experience, but none in php.

Any advice?

Answer 1

Any of the popular forms extensions should be able to do this for you.

My preferred extension for this type of thing is ChronoForms which will certainly gather the data, allow you to analyse it and then send conditional emails and/or save results to the database.

As far as manipulation goes, you may need to learn a little PHP if the forms extension doesn't do everything you need.

ChronoForms v5 example showing typical actions such as email and saving to the database:

Answer 2

You are certainly going to need some php in order to achieve this.

Most of the well-know advanced Joomla Form builders could do the job, so it goes down to a matter of preference on which one to use.

RS Form

RSForm Pro is certainly capable of doing this. There is much advanced functionality you can achieve, as it allows custom scripting for data and functionality manipulation in various points of the POST workflow. So, you can access and do anything you want with the full POST Data, send emails, save them in other database tables, use CURL to post to external «listeners» etc...

In addition to the standard PHP Script events of the RSForm, there is RSForm Advanced PHP, a 3rd party plugin that gives more «hook» points in the workflow.

---

Fabrik

Another great tool worths checking and you could consider is Fabrik

It's a Form/Application Builder that provides great flexibility to build custom form /database applications inside Joomla. You can attach your own PHP scripts on the various forms or lists you create with it, to perform custom functionality if needed.

---

Note

In Both the above components, when you write your own php you have access to the Joomla API, to facilitate the communication with your site, make you writing your code faster, and being compliant with Joomla.

^{Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the above extensions in any way}

Answer 3

I think that Breezing Forms will fit your needs

Breezing Forms

Supports scripting and has a lot of examples and docs.