CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

The <input> elements are generated dynamically based on the profile configuration. The most salient functions are CRM_Profile_Form::buildQuickForm() and CRM_Core_BAO_UFGroup::buildProfile():

https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/CRM/Profile/Form.php#L753
https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/CRM/Profile/Form.php#L775
https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/blob/master/CRM/Core/BAO/UFGroup.php#L1752

(Note: The syntax highlighting on Github looks a bit buggy for UFGroup.php. It may be easier to read that file locally in an IDE/code-editor.)

The key thing to note is that CRM_Profile_Form has a loop which looks like this:

  public function buildQuickForm() {
    // ...
    foreach ($this->_fields as $name => $field) {
      // ...
      CRM_Core_BAO_UFGroup::buildProfile($this, $field, $this->_mode);
      // ...
    }
    // ...
  }

The buildProfile() function then has a number of conditionals which check for different field-types/configurations that may have been chosen by the site-admin. A typical one is:

elseif (substr($fieldName, 0, 7) === 'country') {
      $form->add('select', $name, $title,
        array(
          '' => ts('- select -')) + CRM_Core_PseudoConstant::country(), $required
      );

The "$form->add(...)" statement is responsible for creating the form element (eg <input>, <select>, or <textarea>). You can find some more info about them at http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/QuickForm+Reference .