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Gravity Support Forums » Plugin Support » Gravity Forms

  1. jaidesign
    Member

    Hi Team,

    We need to extent the backend view of entries for a client.

    - The client/form has 3 departments
    - He wants to be able to limit the entries shown in the entries list by department.
    - So what we need basically is to extend the list where one can limit the entries to:
    "All, Unread, Starred, Trash, Department 1, Department 2, Department 3"

    We see that GF has putt in "Starred" in that list, so it must be fairly easy to get the departments in there as well..?

    Any hints how to start is welcome!

    thanks/regards
    JaiDesign

    Posted 12 years ago on Wednesday February 15, 2012 | Permalink

  2. Dana Cobb
    Administrator

    Hi, JaiDesign,

    There currently isn't functionality in place that will allow you to add your own search filter for entries. You can use the department name as your search or have the department field displayed for the entries and sort them by department.

    Posted 12 years ago on Friday February 17, 2012 | Permalink

  3. jaidesign
    Member

    Hi.

    Thanks for the reply, but It is funny to see that the most popular reply in this forum is "GF currently does not support this feature.." or something similar. Had this been a free plugin...we would expect that.

    However, we have a developer license and we want to extend GF with with this feature. We know we can search and put in the columns like you say, however our client, a company with 350+ employees and a yearly turnover of about 60.000.000 USD, wants this feature ASAP.

    Our question was how to extend GF with this feature, where to start, what hooks could be used to accomplish this. Not about the basic usage of the plugin...

    So, we need to add this feature.

    1. how do we hook into and alter the way the entry list is displayed. We have found no actions that can do that.

    2. If (1) does not exist is there a way to make GF use a custom version of the file entry_list.php. We see that in entry_list.php line 501 the code starts that creates the sub menu that we want to alter:

    <ul class="subsubsub"> ...

    We know that we could simply add our code there with a link with a query that filter by field. like this for the Starred:

  4. " href="?page=gf_entries&view=entries&id=<?php echo $form_id ?>&filter=star"><?php _e("Starred", "gravityforms"); ?> <span class="count">(<span id="star_count"><?php echo $starred_count ?></span>)</span> |

    5. But we need to know how to add custom filters (ie. by other columns)...

    2a. Where is the function that actually implements the filter (filter=star)?

    3. One of our strategies is to make a plugin that inserts a new view of the entry list with this feature added (2 above). so that future updates does not overwrite our code.

    3a. So, is there a forum post/doc entry or anywhere that explains step by step how to add functionality to GF. that is, how to make a GF add on? We have looked at the developer docs, but we find it a bit skinny...

    4. any hints/comments on this, beyond basic usage, would be welcome.

    thanks/regards,
    JaiDesign

Posted 12 years ago on Saturday February 18, 2012 | Permalink

  • Carl Hancock
    Administrator

    First off, to set expectations and tackle the first part of your reply above...

    Thanks for the reply, but It is funny to see that the most popular reply in this forum is "GF currently does not support this feature.." or something similar. Had this been a free plugin...we would expect that

    Gravity Forms cannot be everything to everybody. It isn't going to have every single feature that every single user wants. That is simply unrealistic to expect and I challenge you to find any complex application that 100% suits every single users needs. You won't.

    With over 300,000+ sites running Gravity Forms, users cannot assume that just because they want a feature, it is something that the vast majority of Gravity Forms users will also want or utilize. There are simply too many use cases and types of users for that to be the case with every feature request.

    We aren't going to add every single feature that is requested into the product. That is simply not going to happen. That is a recipe for disaster from a product development standpoint and leads to a mess of a product.

    To be honest, that is a path that many free plugins DO go down and it's also why many products, including some of our free competitors, are a spaghetti code nightmare under the hood. We've seen this style development destroy a companies product firsthand.

    If you treat product development like it is custom consulting work, the product will fail.

    So if this is the type of feature development you are expecting for how rocketgenius manages the development of the Gravity Forms product, you may want to consider using another solution.

    Now in response to your question regarding the customization you would like to implement...

    As Dana mentioned above there are currently no hooks/filters designed to allow you to customize the entry list display itself. There are currently no hooks to allow you to add your own custom search filters or customize how entries are returned.

    In order to do what you describe the only solution would be for you to create your own entry_list.php replacement, backup the existing entry_list.php file and replace it with your own. You would have to then apply this customization after installing any Gravity Forms updates.

    This simply has not been something that has been heavily requested by our users so it has not been something we have focused on from a product development standpoint.

    Posted 12 years ago on Monday February 20, 2012 | Permalink

  • jaidesign
    Member

    hi,

    First, we made that comment because we feel you could be a little more technical in your answers to technical questions. We never wanted you to add this as a feature, and we are sure your business model is sound.

    We simply want you to help us extend/develop the plugin so it fits our need.

    So, we would still like to know:

    2a. Where is the function that actually implements the filter (filter=star)?
    ie. which file and what line number..

    3a. So, is there a forum post/doc entry or anywhere that explains step by step how to add functionality to GF. that is, how to make a GF add on? (we assume from the post above that the answer is no, but just in case someone else has gone through this before, we would like an answer).

    Also:
    4. is there a function that returns the Admin version of the column/entry labels?
    some of the field labels in our form are a bit long, and, thus, we have made shorter Admin versions in the form settings. Now we like to get those Admin labels to display on a front-end page that shows the form.

    thanks/regards,
    JaiDesign.

    Posted 12 years ago on Monday February 20, 2012 | Permalink

  • Carl Hancock
    Administrator

    Add-Ons are created by making a WordPress Plugin that customizes Gravity Forms through the use of available hooks and filters. It's the exact same way themes and plugins customize WordPress itself.

    Unfortunately in your case, there are no hooks or filters available for you to implement what you describe, which means you would have to customize, change or replace the core files themselves.

    Because of this you would not be able to create an add-on plugin that can customize Gravity Forms simply by installing and activating the plugin.

    I'm a little confused as to your question in #4. If the field labels are too long to display ont he front end, why not shorten the field labels? The frontend is where the field labels are intended to be displayed... so if you implemented an admin label and then made the frontend display the admin label... what would the point of the field label be? Can you elaborate on what exactly you are trying to do?

    Posted 12 years ago on Monday February 20, 2012 | Permalink

  • jaidesign
    Member

    Hi,

    Why cant you just answer the questions? Forget what we are trying to do, we have other strategies as well. Simply help us by answering the questions.

    So Again:

    2a. Where is the function that actually implements the filter (filter=star)?
    ie. which file and what line number..

    3a. So, is there a forum post/doc entry or anywhere that explains step by step how to add functionality to GF. that is, how to make a GF add on? (we assume from the post above that the answer is no, but just in case someone else has gone through this before, we would like an answer).

    Also:
    4. is there a function that returns the Admin version of the column/entry labels?
    some of the field labels in our form are a bit long, and, thus, we have made shorter Admin versions in the form settings. Now we like to get those Admin labels to display on a front-end page that shows the form.

    Ad 4: We want to present the entriy that have been submitted through a form on a front end. Just like entry_list.php shows this on the backend. When a user submitts a form We have a lable, for example, that says

    "Please enter your first name:"

    Now, when we want to show the form in entries we want the column for the first name, however, since "Please enter your first name:" is too long to use as a column label, we choose to use a STANDARD FEATURE in GF where we can set "ADMIN VERSIONS" of the field label to for example "First Name".

    So in the entriy list the magic happens:

    "Please enter your first name:" = "First Name"

    Now, this is a great feature, and we would like to know if there is a function, or how we could get the admin version of the field name ie "First Name" rather than "Please enter your first name:"

    I hope you get it. I cant explain it any more detailed. Look this is already a feature in GF and we would like to get the admin lable to be used in our theme template file that will display a table of entries on the front end, exactly like entries is displayed in the back-end.

    please, answer all the questions this time. we just want to get this done, in one way or another. It is of no use that you keep telling us that we cant do this without modifying the core files. If so, then we will do that, and we still would like clear answer to our rather simple questions.

    thanks/regards,
    JaiDesign.

    Posted 12 years ago on Tuesday February 21, 2012 | Permalink

    • This topic has been resolved and has been closed to new replies.