Filled In Plugin
Filled In is a generic form processing plugin that will validate and store data submitted through forms. You can use it for any kind of data input, from simple contact forms on a blog to full-blown questionnaires on a business site.
The basic features of Filled In are:
- Customizable data filters and data processors
- Central data storage, with exports to CSV and XML
- Email reporting, with attachments and inline images
- AJAX support (forms always work in browsers without JavaScript)
- Built-in CAPTCHA support
- Built-in poMMo mailing list support
- Built-in file upload support
Read the history for a complete list of features.
Filled In is available in the following languages:
- English
- Italiano, thanks to Simone Righini
- French, thanks to Zesty
Installation
Installation is like any WordPress plugin:
- Download filled-in.zip
- Unzip
- Upload the
filled-indirectory to/wp-content/pluginson your server - Activate the plugin
Note that if you are upgrading from 1.5 you will need to reconfigure your forms. As much information as possible is retained, but the configuration details of individual filters and processors are not. You are advised to backup your data before upgrading, just in case something bad happens.
You can find full details of installing a plugin on the plugin installation page.
Using Filled In - The Basics
Filled In takes an existing XHTML form and routes all data submission through it's own routines, providing you with a consistent interface for managing form validation, data processing, and data storage. In order to route data you give the form an ID that matches a receiving Filled In form name (as created in the Filled In interface).
Create a Filled In form recipient, giving it a unique name.
Create a form (or modify an existing form) and give the form element an ID attribute that matches the Filled In form recipient name.
Look forward to a fully validated form!
Note that all messages and styles are fully configurable.
If you are unfamiliar with HTML and don't understand how this all fits together then don't worry, there are plenty of pictures and even a few movies that will hopefully explain everything. You can use any application you want to create the forms themselves (for example, Dreamweaver), and the only required action is that the form ID must match a Filled In form.
If you were paying attention to the above images you might have noticed that no action or method attribute was needed on the form. As long as the ID can be matched, Filled In will insert the required form attributes, making sure the form is fully functional.
Taking It Further with Extensions
Filled In provides a lot more than just being able to change form attributes. When a form is submitted, Filled In passes the data through several customisable layers. These layers perform all kinds of tasks from validating the data, to sending out email reports.
Each layer can have any number of extensions. Filled In comes with a selection of default extensions, and you can download or develop third-party extensions to perform any additional task yourself.
The default extensions are:
- Pre Processors
- Exclude/include fields - remove specified fields
- Must be logged in/out - the user must/must not be logged into WordPress
- Filters
- CAPTCHA - add a CAPTCHA image to a field and ensure the field contents match the image
- Checkbox/Radio - ensures a field is a checkbox or radio button
- File upload - limit upload size and file type
- Is Email - ensure a field contains an email address
- Is Equal/Not Equal To - A logical equality comparison
- Is Greater/Lesser - A logical comparison
- Is Numeric - Ensure the field is a number
- Is Required - Ensure a value is given
- String Length - Ensure a certain number of characters are given
- Word Count - Ensure a certain number of words are given
- Post Processors
- Send as email - send the data in an email with full templating, attachments, and inline images (courtesy of the super Swiftmailer)
- Send to poMMo mailing list
- Save to CSV - suitable for use with Excel
- Save to XML
- Save upload - move uploads into a directory of your choice
- Login to WordPress - take submitted data and use it to login to WordPress
- Register in WordPress - take submitted data and use it to register a new WordPress user
- Result Processors
- Display a message - simple give feedback to the user
- Redirect to a post or URL
- Redisplay input form - pre-filled with original data or empty
If a failure is detected on any layer then the progress of data is stopped, and a message displayed back to the user. Regardless of what happens, all data is stored, allowing you to not only review correct data, but to check what problems people have with a particular form.
The rest of these instructions will be based upon the concept of creating a contact form. Naturally you can adapt the details to any kind of form you want.
Further documentation
You can learn more about using Filled In by reading the documentation or the SDK. Details on certain extensions can be found on the extensions page.
Support
Please direct all support questions to the Filled In support forum. Any support questions left on this page may not be answered.
Bugs & New Features
| Date | Current outstanding bugs | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 09 Mar 2008 | Creating CAPTCHA filter not working | |
| 06 Sep 2008 | Downloading attachments | |
| 14 Nov 2008 | Filled-in and MS Windows Server Installation |
A full list of all bugs can be found in the Filled In issue tracker.
| Date | Current requested features |
|---|---|
| 10 Nov 2008 | WPMU support |
A full list of all requested features can be found in the Filled In feature tracker.
Comments (page 12 of 13)
May 21, 2008 10:08 am
Hi is this the TDO Mini-Form in action? The one on this site.
Please help: Does anyone have any idea what my problem is?
Hi, I was wondering if you could help me out with this problem I have with form. I would really appreciate it, since I have searched and look everywhere for an answer but I can’t figure it out. I can’t get the form to be posted on a page were users can access it.
I have done the create a page, but it just creates a blank page exp.
http://www.mycharlieclarknissan.com/charlieclarkedblogging/wordpress/?page_id=15
May 3, 2008 5:09 am
Hi John, absolutely excellent plugin.
I would have submitted this in the feature tracker, but it's returning a 502 error at the moment, so please excuse me for putting it here.
I'd absolutely LOVE to see you offer the ability to submit the form's content as a wordpress post with custom fields to a chosen category. This inclusion as one of the post-processors would make this plugin incredibly usful as a makshift ticketing system, using wordpress' existing comment features to follow each user-submitted ticket.
Cheers, and thanks again!
Apr 27, 2008 3:49 am
Hi,
I want to modify form input values. Example: Uppercase or First Uppercase form input values.
I modified some extensions at filter section, yes it's working. But it saves form input values without modified values.
Now,
For saving modified values, Where is the true modifying area? Pre, Filter, Post?
Is there an extension which you're modified data before saving database. I would like to examine it.
Apr 9, 2008 4:55 am
Just to clarify what I'm asking: I have a WP site with heaps of product pages - each page has a 'quick quote' form on it that lets a user request a price based on the product they are currently looking at. So it made sense to include the form as part of the theme page template that each of these pages use, this way the site editors onlu need to enter product info, the quote form is automatically included by the template.
The catch appears to be that Filled In does a search and replace on the WP database ie the contents of these pages (or posts). The WP theme template files remain outside the scope of Filled In's search and replace. Is this correct? Can you manually call the Filled In form 'search and replace' function in the template.php file to work it's magic on the hard-coded form?
I have the exact form working with Filled In, but only when I paste it into the post or page content in the WP interface.
Apr 8, 2008 4:42 am
First, apologies for not putting this in the forum - I tried, but registration stuffed up and now I can't re-register with the same email, nor will it let me reset my password.
Anyways, I have FI working fine, provided the form I'm applying it to is pasted into a WP page/post. How do you apply FI to a form manually created eg in a page template such as page.php? Obviously tried giving the form the same ID, but how do you link the form to it's corresponding Filled In behaviour/actions?
Apr 6, 2008 10:40 am
Manish, currently you can't, but I do have that in the pipeline for the future.
Arun, unfortunately progress bars are impossible/near-to-impossible and depend heavily on web server and software, or impose too many conditions for it to be a reasonable feature.
Dresah, currently no, but if you want to raise this as a feature request then please do so!
Apr 3, 2008 4:36 am
Hi,
Is it possible to copy form settings to another form?
(Except manuel sql queries)
Mar 28, 2008 11:37 am
This plugin is totally brilliant. Thanks a lot, John. I had only one feature request, though -- a progress bar for forms that have file uploads. Is that on the agenda?
Mar 28, 2008 3:20 am
How can I use it for other websites. I mean apart from wordpress.
Mar 5, 2008 9:42 am
Craig, if you get people to register a WordPress account then yes it is possible. If not then it's still possible, but requires some custom PHP. If you want to raise this as a feature request then it may get included at some point in the future.
Dresah, fixed
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