Theming Drupal 6.x Forms

Theming Forms ten steps to beautiful Drupal forms emma jane hogbin emma@hicktech.com www.emmajane.net

About this talk ● Matt Haughey (MetaFilter) once said, “Forms are tedious, confusing, often poorly designed, and most people equate their use with things like paying taxes.” Forms are often overlooked by themers because the code seems complicated and the forms are good enough that the hassle of learning the code does not seem to be worth the trouble. But in Drupal 6 theming forms has gotten a WHOLE LOT EASIER! ● In this session you will learn how to make your forms look the way you want. We'll start by looking at some great helper modules you can install to make forms a little sleeker. And then we'll move on to the basics of using the developer module to identify, and theme, form components. We'll specifically look at altering CCK forms although the techniques will apply to other Drupal forms too! ● If you've had tears of joy or tears of frustration from theming forms in Drupal 6, please bring your experiences to share with others. ● This talk is based on content from Front End Drupal—a Drupal theming book published by Pearson Education. You can read it in draft format at http://safari.informit.com/9780137007752. The print publication should be available Spring 2009 ish.

documentation author

documentation team

Drupal drupal.org/user/1773 Photo: morten.dk Legs: walkah

FAPI: Form Application Programming Interface

1. Prepare 2. Build 3. Posted (“submit”) 4. Validate 5. Render 6. Save http://drupal.org/node/165104

Drupalspecific functions: drupal_ Modulespecific functions that you customize: hook_ Variables that you can set: #variable_name http://drupal.org/node/165104

http://drupal.org/node/165104

Most of your attention will be spent at the “Render” part of this flow chart http://drupal.org/node/165104

Confusing? http://flickr.com/photos/sherwinh/1354201451/

What modules can do != What themes can do

Custom Forms in 10 Easy Steps

1 What do you need to change?

add new fields, form layout, order of fields, hide the hard stuff, add visual cues, hide the secret stuff, make it prettier, make “required” more obvious, rich text editing, changing some forms, changing all forms, changing display text, changing button text, the height of a textarea, multiple page forms

2 Drupal 6 is slick. Make your changes from the GUI.

3 Use helper modules and themes.

Vertical tabs

Node form (Garland only)

4 Make changes with CSS.

Make fun, and useful changes.

5 Three golden rules to theming forms: 1. http://api.drupal.org/api/group/themeable/6 2. Drupal stores form information in an array that can be manipulated with functions in #1. 3. Register unique forms to make unique changes.

6 “Themer Info” in Developer Module is your friend.

http://flickr.com/photos/7891209@N04/2951368555

http://flickr.com/photos/lecrapo/2124686412/

7 Identify the unique ID for the form.

8 In template.php create: function THEMENAME_form_id ($form) { // stuff goes in here }

Alternate (register your own form) function THEMENAME_theme() { return array( 'your_specific_form_id' => array ( 'arguments' => array ('form') => NULL), ), ); }

9 Reset (or unset) form values function THEMENAME_form_id ($form) { // set your new form data/values/text/etc $form['buttons']['submit']['#value'] = “YARR”; $form['title']['#title'] = t('New label text'); // put the values back into the Drupal form return (drupal_render($form)); }

10 API.drupal.org is also your friend. http://api.drupal.org/api/group/themeable/6 http://api.drupal.org/api/file/developer/topics/forms_api_reference.html

Thank you! emma@hicktech.com Read the draft text at: http://safari.oreilly.com/9780137007752 Book release date: Spring 2009 ish

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Theming Drupal 6.x Forms

by Emma Jane Hogbin

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