By nhunter on

I'm a newcomer to Drupal and I'm having problems wrapping my mind around form processing. I have been researching all day, browsing the web and stepping through the code, and I still can't figure out what I need to do to perform what should be a relatively simple function. Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

I have set up a new content type and with hook_form I can create the standard create / edit / delete form. So far so good.

I have a date field in my type and instead of having the user enter the date (using a date or date popup type element on the form which I can do, no problem), I want to allow them to click a button which will populate the field with the current date & time. The code I have come up is as follows.

function my_type_form(&$node, $form_state) {

  $weight = 0;

  // if his value is set, we're rebuilding the form after updating the last contact date
  if (isset($form_state['values']['last_contact'])) {
    $last_contact = $form_state['values']['last_contact']['value'];
  
  // otherwise, we're building the form for the first time, use the value retrieved from the database
  } else {
    $last_contact = $node->last_contact;
    $form['last_contact'] = array(
      '#type' => 'value',
      '#value' =>  $last_contact,
    );
  }
  
  $form['last_contact_display'] = array(
    '#type' => 'item',
    '#title' => t('Last Contact'),
    '#value' =>  !empty($last_contact) ? date('D, M j, Y, g:i a', strtotime($last_contact)) : '',
    '#weight' => $weight++,
  );
  
  $form['reset_last_contact'] = array(
    '#type' => 'submit',
    '#value' => 'reset',
    '#submit' => array ('my_type_reset_last_contact'),
    '#weight' => $weight++,
  );
    
  return $form;
}

function my_type_reset_last_contact($form, &$form_state) {
  $date = date('Y-m-d H:i');
  $form_state['values']['last_contact']['value'] = $date;
  $form_state['rebuild'] = TRUE;
}

Everything works fine until I get to the hook_update function, at which time it appears that $node->last_contact has not been populated.

I have stepped through the code several times and I can not figure out why this is not working. I know it would work if I defined it as a text field. I thought value element types were passed through to the submit.

Many thanks in advance!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

nhunter’s picture

nhunter commented 
$form_state['storage']['last_contact']

seems to work a better than 

$form_state['values']['last_contact']['value']

This introduces a new problem though. Now the form does not redirect to the view screen but stays on the edit screen. I guess I need to unset $form_state['storage'] when I'm done with it...but where?

nhunter’s picture

nhunter commented

So I use hook_form_alter to add a submit handler to the 'submit' button, then clear $form_state['storage'] in the submit handler.

/**
 * Implementation of hook_form_alter().
 */
function my_form_id_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  $form['buttons']['submit']['#submit'][] = 'my_form_submit_handler';
}

function my_form_submit_handler($form, &$form_state) {
  unset($form_state['storage']);
}

What a rat's nest.