FormTools Port to bitweaver

Created by: Lester Caine, Last modification: 05 Dec 2011 (20:30 GMT)

FormTools is an open source (free!) PHP / MySQL script that provides any existing web form with a backend database and a user-friendly interface to manage the form submission data, plus a wealth of tools for managing and manipulating your form data.

While the structure is somewhat different to that provided by the bitweaver framework, it looks as if it will not be too difficult to port it over as a standard bitweaver package

While not fully tested, the database interface has been upgraded to work with ADOdb, and is running nicely on Firebird. A number of steps have been taken while developing the port, and this started by simply mapping the installer to run using the firebird driver rather than mysql. This was relatively easy, but some areas were missing which are normally provided via the formtools upgrade process. The longer term plan is to build a database schema for the bitweaver installer, which also checks the installation status of a package, and provide for an upgrade process on a package by package basis. This is one of the best features of bitweaver and allows private development of packages and ports like this while maintaining the operation of the rest of the facilities.

Several sections of the FormTools framework which duplicate the facilities of bitweaver can be removed. This includes login management, theming, some aspects of language management, and general menu management.

Development work is currently being managed via mercurial, and the repo for the fromtools work is published here, and may be mirrored to github later if required.

ToDo List

  1. Port to ADOdb library - already completed
  2. Theme restructure - have created ft_default and classicgrey bw themes
  3. Strip user management - Using $gBitUser to provide account_id
  4. Reorganize .js and .css loading and script elements to bw format
  5. Install schema - Initial pass created, but enum fields replaced by suitable text fields
    Firebird is set up to use validated domains for these, but this is not supported by other database or by ADOdb.

Until I have got the installer working making this available to other developers is a little difficult. If anybody is interested in this port please email and I'll look at accelerating that todo item.