A Form, a Submit Button, a Processing Backend

I came across the need to do a Form Submital, in the fashion of those CGI-powered forums ubiquitous on the Web. In effect, the idea is to have fields for requesting user, type of request, perhaps a run-at field, etc. Then, on clicking the submit button, the machinery is set in movement and the form information is either emailed, or written to a database, or written somewhere in the filesystem.

TWikiForms look great, are easy to build and use - but are not meant for the type of work at hand. The user should submit the information, rather than save the topic. And the output shouldn't be a neatly formated form table, but a confirmation/error message of some kind. In the background, some perl script will be writing the stuff into a database (or, in my case, to a cron table).

Or let's say we would like to have a front-end to a database: the user picks the fields, performs the search, gets a table. BugzillaQueryPlugin already does the hard work, but we're using syntax rules rather than a graphic interface. In an ancient post to Codev (DatabaseFormsSubmission), DavidMurray states what appears to be this type of requirement.

Well, one can indeed create the form in HTML and have the plugin deal with the background work - which will be significant, given the security constraints. But then we'll be losing the modularity we would have by splitting form construction/submital and background processing.

So, right now I'm trying to implement the thing with an HTML form in TWiki, which on pressing the submit button calls the backend (packaged as a Plugin). Would anyone care to comment on the idea?

-- RenatoSerodio - 06 Sep 2006

-- Contributors: RenatoSerodio - 06 Sep 2006

Discussion

The CommentPlugin might offer what you need. You can create templates that define custom input forms and output format. That way you can capture content in a structured way. See twiki.org templates at UserCommentsTemplate, and sample forms at ActionTrackerPluginAppraisal and EditActionItems.

I think a generic way to define the backend would be useful, such as sending output by e-mail in structured form, feeding it into an external database or another web application using REST or the like.

-- PeterThoeny - 06 Sep 2006