Add customfields in the administration section of a module

Question

Is there a way, to load with an XML element, the custom fields, from the Joomla component, com_fields in the backend of a module? I know how to take them from the default.php and display them, but I was wondering if there is a way to load them in the backend of a module administration and then reproduce them like a repeatable field? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

You can do this with a content plugin quite easily. See this guide for starters.

You create the XML in your plugin form/modwhatever.xml. Now you can add whatever fields you wish - you might want to look at the articles form for examples of user, publishing dates etc, which can be located in administrator/components/com_content/models/forms/article.xml.

Your plugin would implement a method like so:

    public function onContentPrepareForm($form, $data)
    {

        $app = JFactory::getApplication();
        $option = $app->input->get('option');

        switch ($option) {

            case 'mod_whatever':

                if ($app->isAdmin()) {

                    JForm::addFormPath(__DIR__ . '/forms');

                    $form->loadFile('modwhatever', false);

                }

                return true;

        }

        return true;

    }

To ensure you don't need to apply any further changes, you can use the attribs form as a basis so that your new fields are available on the modules params, e.g.:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<form>
  <fields name="attribs">
     <fieldset name="customstuff" label="Custom Stuff">
        <field 
            name="created_by" 
            type="user"
            label="COM_CONTENT_FIELD_CREATED_BY_LABEL" 
            description="COM_CONTENT_FIELD_CREATED_BY_DESC" 
        />

        <field 
            name="created_by_alias" 
            type="text"
            label="COM_CONTENT_FIELD_CREATED_BY_ALIAS_LABEL" 
            description="COM_CONTENT_FIELD_CREATED_BY_ALIAS_DESC"
            size="20" 
        />
     </fieldset>
  </fields>
</form>