Form Tools: Form Processing, Storage and Access Script (Review)
Jun 15, 2009 by Srikanth AD Miscellaneous
Introduction
There are many web services for easy form building like jotform, Wufoo etc. Most of them can serve handy for creating forms. But, if you are looking for a perfect solution for form processing, entries storage, management and access, then Form Tools is at your rescue.
Form Tools is designed for people who work on online registration sites and require any mode of information gathering from their online visitors. In short, its a form processor, storage and data access script written in PHP and MySQL.
It’s designed to work with any existing web forms. It allows you to store form submissions in a database, provides your clients with a user-friendly interface to manage their form submissions. It includes options such as mass data export via excel, printer-friendly pages, data sorting, form submission editing and optional email notifications.
You might want to check out a demo of Form Tools here.
Key Features
- It’s freely available for anyone to download and modify under the GNU General Public License.
- It’s Re-usable, you can use Form Tools to handle multiple forms – even from different websites. Multiple user accounts can be setup with edit / view permissions based on your requirement.
- Form Tools is Multi-lingual. It provides full internationalization and localization support. Click here for a list of currently available translations.
- Its user interface is simple and easy to get started. Every aspect of the user interface including color, fonts and the logo can be customized.
System Requirements
- PHP 4.3+
- MySQL 4+
- PHP Sessions.
- PHP mail() function is required for auto-notification of form submissions.
- Any web browser with JavaScript-enabled.
You will need a MySQL user account which has permissions to create new tables within a database.
Step-by-Step Installation Guide
Here, I’m test installing Form Tools on localhost using XAMPP (an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start). Before proceeding, you need to create a new MySQL database for Form Tools using your preferred database administration tool like phpMyAdmin.
Step1
Download the Form Tools zip file from the downloads page and unzip the files into a folder on your computer.
Step2
With an FTP client, upload the files to your web server. This folder must be accessible via a URL on your website, For instance, http://www.yoursite.com/formtools/
Step3
Open the installation script in your browser. This is found in the /install subfolder the location where you installed it, e.g.http://www.yoursite.com/formtools/install/. If all went good, you should see a page similar to the following screenshot. Just select your language and click on ‘Continue’.
System Check
This page runs a few tests on your system to ensure it’s able to run Form Tools. If everything is fine, you should see PASS next to every variable. To proceed further click on ‘Continue’.
Step4
Creating Database Tables
Here we need to create the Form Tools database tables. You should have already created your database as mentioned above.
Creating config.php file
Form Tools stores your server and database settings in this file. Click the “Create File” button to automatically generate the file on your server. You might want to read more about the config.php file here.
Step5
Creating Admin Account
Here, you are going to create an administrator account. This account is used for managing all aspects of Form Tools, such as adding forms and creating client accounts etc.
Note: Before you log in, you must delete the /install/ folder on your server. You will not be allowed to log in until it has been removed.
Dashboard
Once you login as administrator, you can create multiple accounts for your clients. Permissions for each client, either view / edit can be set according to your needs.
Form Tools provides extensive control for form management. Each form can be on different websites and can be controlled by multiple users. You can change the field sizes and data types of variables in the forms as per your requirement.
Apart from the above, you can download the submissions or entries of each form as HTML, CSV, MS Ecel or XML format. The entries can be printed in a friendly manner, either one-by-one or one submission per page. It also allows you to configure emails to be sent whenever a form is submitted.
Conclusion
Form Tools is a prolific script for form processing, storage and data access. Its key features include form management by multiple users, data export and printer friendly pages. Its free, easy to install and use.
They’ve just launched the Form Tools v.2. Give it a try!
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Tags: form processing, form tools, forms, mail, management, mysql, php, review, storage
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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November 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
Hello. Congratulations on your remarkable article. e-mail is a established means of communication. I prefer Outlook as my e-mail client and with the help of Email Sorter Wizard, an Outlook add-on, I file all my e-mail fast and with ease. Your no nonsense approach is fresh and new.
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