Book Image

ChronoForms 3.1 for Joomla! site Cookbook

By : Bob Janes
Book Image

ChronoForms 3.1 for Joomla! site Cookbook

By: Bob Janes

Overview of this book

Joomla! is a fantastic way to create a dynamic CMS. Now you want to go to the next step and interact with your users. Forms are the way you ask questions and get replies. ChronoForms is the extension that lets you do that and this book tells you how. From building your first form to creating rich form based applications we will cover the features that ChronoForms offers you in a clear hands-on way. Drawing on three years daily experience using ChronoForms and supporting users there is valuable help for new users and experienced developers alike. We will take you through form development step by step: from creating your first form using ChronoForms’ built-in drag-and-drop tool; validating user input; emailing the results; saving data in the database, showing the form in your Joomla! site and much more.Each chapter addresses a topic like ‘validation’ or ‘email’ and the recipes in the chapter each address a different user question from the beginners’ question ‘How do I set up an email?’ through to more advanced questions like using some PHP to create a custom email Subject line.Over eight chapters and eighty recipes we cover all of the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ that new users and developers have about using ChronoForms. The recipe structure allows you to pick and choose just the solution that you need.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
ChronoForms 3.1 for Joomla! Site Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Tracking site information


Sometimes, we want to track where users have come from, or capture other information about them as they move around the site. This may be to customise what we show them, or to build up our knowledge of how the site is used in some way.

We've seen some parts of this earlier in the book and in this recipe, we'll revisit some of that content.

Getting ready

Nothing special is required; these techniques will work with any form.

The recipe below looks at several different ways that you might want to track your user. Pick out the one (or maybe two) that will be most useful to you.

How to do it...

  1. 1. If you need to track the user

    Fortunately, Joomla! makes this very easy for us as Joomla! does the basic tracking. When you visit a Joomla! Site, a "session" is created that contains some personal identifiers. This follows you as you browse the site until the current visit ends.

    Among the information saved in the session is the Joomla! User ID, which in turn, lets us access the...