Author Topic: Requesting Extra Information In an Event Registration Form (Read 2676 times)

LanceD · July 13, 2008, 03:47:40 pm

Is there no way to request special event information using CiviEvent's built in registration system? Specifically, we're hosting a walk event where we need to request shirt sizes from the walker's that attend. There is a way to log custom information into the event in CiviEvent and profiles let you request extra contact info from the registrant. But I can't seem to find a way to request this kind of custom information in the Event module. Is there no way other than building a custom form and leveraging the CiviCRM API?

Dave Greenberg · July 13, 2008, 05:02:47 pm

Create a new "group of custom fields" with "Used For" = Participant.
Create your t-shirt custom field or fields (size, color etc.).
Create a Profile and add a profile field(s) which point to your t-shirt questions. (Or add the t-shirt fields to a profile you're already using for the event.)
If the profile isn't already linked to the Event Registration, do so via Manage Events >> Configure >> Registration

LanceD · July 14, 2008, 05:43:53 am

Awesome... thanks, Dave.

On another note, are there any plans on the table to build a sponsorship function into CiviEvent. Our organization regularly holds walkathons and the way we do them, that means we have a number of walkers that are sponsored by other families, friends, and organizations. Aside from setting up a custom donation form and an event registration form, there's really no way to account for that in CiviCRM... and even that is a bit of a hack.

Thanks!

Dave Greenberg · July 14, 2008, 10:22:58 am

There's a pretty complete specification for what we're calling "Personal Campaign Pages" on the wiki. This feature will probably be implemented in the 2.2 release. Comments / feedback as to how well it fits your use case would be great. Also, if you haven't posted a quick description of your organization and how they're using CiviCRM to the community "Showcase" forum board - please take a few minutes to do so :-)

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/PFP%2B-%2BSpecification

LanceD · July 15, 2008, 05:04:22 am

Thanks, Dave. I'll take a look over the spec and post back with some thoughts once it's had some time to digest.

A few other questions about the CiviEvent Registration tools...

1) Is there a way to override the default aqua styles in CiviCRM? Or would I have to build another style sheet to contradict some of the aqua styles? Specifically, this would be for the front end, not for the administration area (our users don't care what color the forms are... but our site doesn't match with the aqua styles).

2) Is there any work on the table to shift from table elements like tr's and td's to something more controllable (e.g. divs)? I ask because the public facing version of some of our CiviForms wastes a lot of space... but there isn't much I can do to clean them up unless I can override the output or style it (which you can only do to a degree with tables).

Thanks.

Dave Greenberg · July 15, 2008, 09:27:42 am

Regarding 1) ... I think your choices are creating custom versions of the templates for the front-facing pages you want to change (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Customize+Built-in+and+Profile+Screens) and / or adding another style sheet to modify the things you need to change. (Custom templates also allow you to change the layout markup as needed.)

Regarding 2) ... We have periodically posted requests for folks with strong css / layout skills to submit patches to make our layouts more "flexible" / controllable :-) So if you can provide alternative versions of the layout templates for some / all of the front-facing pages (which are reasonably cross-browser and cross-CMS functionally) - that would be great. We've gone back and forth between div's, definition lists and tables for layout of our fairly complex forms and settled on tables in most places because they seemed to provide the most consistent results given our somewhat limited css skillset and all the variables of surrounding themes, browsers, screen resolutions and the Drupal/Joomla/Standalone contexts.

LanceD · July 15, 2008, 10:13:01 am

Wow... to be honest, I didn't think there was a way to override the output like that. You guys really seem to have thought a lot of this stuff out.

As far as alternate styles for forms and such, is there a forum thread or anything that I can follow to see what the arguments are between tables, dl/dd/dt, and divs? My CSS skills are somewhere between dedicated designer and dedicated developer so I can't guarantee that I'd be able to submit the patches... but if I can, I'd be glad to do that.

Dave Greenberg · July 15, 2008, 10:18:53 am

Latest post on this was: http://civicrm.org/node/326 Might be other info if you search the forums and the older mailing list archives.

LanceD · July 15, 2008, 10:41:01 am

Thanks, Dave. Reading through that, it sounds like there's been a lot of debate about the "right" way to do things with CSS. Personally, for this kind of project, it seems like we should just stick with what works because there isn't ultimately going to be a right/wrong way. It's all just preference in design.

From that standpoint (flexibility without sacrificing practicality), I think divs are probably a solid solution. The reason I say that is that you can mimic the current table layout with less code using divs. And since divs are at the designer's disposal to change however its needed (unlike tables which are very rigid), you can do some amazing CSS things with them too.

In the short term, I need to use the template override function to cleanup some layout issues on one of my clients' sites. As I'm doing that, I'll take a look at the CSS issues from a 40,000 foot view and see if there's something I can contribute to the whole project.

Thanks for all of this info!

LanceD · July 18, 2008, 05:09:39 am

Dave, I've been looking into all of this and I've found a way to modify the HTML tags, but I need more specific information to appear in the template in order to actually do much with the output in CSS. Looking over the Smarty templates, I can see that PHP is assigning several variables to the profile template, but I've having some difficulty finding the PHP file where that assignment takes place so that I can see the data structure passed into the template.

Specifically, I'm modifying templates/CRM/UF/Form/Block.tpl and the information I really could use in the Smarty template is the ID of the current custom field being passed in. Is there a variable I can access via Smarty to get that info? Or a place I could look to get an idea of what data is passed into the template?

Dave Greenberg · July 18, 2008, 09:05:47 pm

Enable Debugging and then add &smartyDebug=1 to your URL. Make sure pop-ups aren't blocked. You'll get a pop-up with all structures.

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Debugging

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Author Topic: Requesting Extra Information In an Event Registration Form (Read 2676 times)

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Requesting Extra Information In an Event Registration Form

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