I am trying to customise RS Form Pro for a charity website that I support.

I want to create:

i) a login / registration form where people enter the usual email / password / personal details. The email is checked in the Database for uniqueness and could act as the unique identifier, or alternatively a unique id could be set for each user.

ii) other booking forms to buy services. Once a user is logged in via the login form, the other booking form fields are automatically populated for them from the Database.

I have a general understanding of PHP / MySQL and have read through the documentation and forums (including the post 'can rs forms be used to register a new site user?'. However I would still appreciate some help as I am stuck.

I would have thought this is a common task (it is after all, something that most websites do), but I'm told by tech support that it's not easy with RS Joomla (and requires much custom code).

Does anyone have experience of making this work?

I think I would need to:

1. populate the form fields automatically with information previously submitted into the registration form, presumably by entering code into the 'Default Value ' box.

(Incidentally, I find it confusing that the Tables (e.g. jos_rsorm_submission_values) do not contain a field / column for each field in the form, e.g. 'Name', 'Email', but rather have just two columns, 'FieldName' and 'FieldValue' which contains all the data inputted. I guess I have to write a QUERY to search down the table until it gets to the relevant rows?)

2. somehow link a unique userID (or email) with each form submitted, to know who is trying to submit the form and so populate it with the relevant data. In the jos_rsform_submissions table, there are columns 'Username' (completely blank in my table) and 'UserId' (all zero's in my table) - I guess I somehow use these to link a user to a form submission

3. In order to use a login form, I think I would need to use cookies or sessions to know who is logged in?

4. Tech support say that I should use the Joomla registration form to create users, rather than creating my own, but this confuses me - I thought that a 'user' in this context means someone that logs in to use the Joomla backend (e.g. I log in as 'admin'), i.e. for technical people managing the site, rather than for, say, the public making bookings through the website? Or can be used for both?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi James

I have a similar situation. I did find the article at: RSForm! Pro User Guide - Customizing RSForm! Pro > "Display PHP variables by default when form is shown" very useful. Hopefully, it will help you as well, at least partially.

I am anxious to see what others have to offer as solutions, particularly if there is a way of splitting "fullname" (identified in the above article) into separate first and last name values in the form, which I currently have in my form.

Hey James,

I am seeking a way to populate a hidden field based on a mysql query. I am looking to query the jos_rsform_submission_values table for a matching phone number, then auto populate a hidden field with the email value of the matching record. Have you found some code for this yet? If so please post and I will share in the research.