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

Exporting your results to Excel or a CSV file


We've seen how to save the information from your forms in the MySQL database, but sometimes this isn't enough and you need to export the data from the table to a spreadsheet or to another database.

ChronoForms lets you export your data to either a CSV file or an Excel spreadsheet.

Note

The ChronoForms features are fairly simple and may not work with big tables or if you need to do any pre-processing of the data. There are other methods that you can use in these cases.

Getting ready

Any form that is connected to a database, and has at least a few records saved, will be fine to test this.

How to do it...

  1. 1. Open the ChronoForms Forms Manager and click the link in the Tables Connected column to open the Record Viewer. At the right end of the toolbar you'll see two icons — Backup to Excel and Backup to CSV.

  2. 2. The standard browser download dialogue will open offering you the opportunity to either Open or Save the file. Usually Save is the better option...