Function declared in template.php not recognized

Charles,

Hopefully this example will help you:

A menu hook that implements a function callback:

<?php
function yourModuleName_menu()
{
  $items = array();
  $items['test-form'] = array(
    'title'            => t('test form'),
    'description'      => t('A form to illustrate form logic in Drupal'),
    'page callback'    => 'YMN_TestFormCB',
    'access arguments' => array( 'access content' ),
    'type'             => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  );

  return $items;
}
?>

Note that in the above, I set a callback function to be called when a user clicks that menu item. I could have used 'drupal_get_form' as the callback, but by having my own routine, I am free to insert additional logic if needed. However, for this example, none is needed, so that callback's logic looks like this:

<?php
function YMN_TestFormCB()
{
  return drupal_get_form('YMN_TestForm');
}
?>

I began the callback function with 'YMN' for 'your module name' - this insures that I'm not accidentally creating a function name that matches some other function from some other module, and I checked the possible hooks, and there are no hooks named 'hook_TestFormCB()'. This issue bit me once, I had a function that matched a drupal hook, and it took some time to figure out what was going on when my site behaved strangely...

Now, that call to drupal_get_form() has some special characteristics. By calling that routine and passing that string, you are telling Drupal that you have the following functions available:

• YMN_TestForm: implements the form construction logic
• YMN_TestForm_validate: your access point to verify the user's input and report any data errors
• YMN_TestForm_submit: only called when your validate function reports no errors, and your opportunity to 'do whatever' with the user supplied data, such as write to the database.

With that explanation, here's an example form builder creating a minimal form:

<?php
function YMN_TestForm( $form_state )
{
  $form = array();
  $form['desc'] = array(
                         '#type'          => 'textfield',
                         '#title'         => t('Description'),
                         '#required'      => TRUE,
                         '#default_value' => t('Describe yourself here...'),
                         '#size'          => 48,
                         '#maxlength'     => 255,
                         '#description'   => t('Instructions to the form user go here.'),
                       );
  $form['submit'] = array(
                           '#type' => 'submit',
                           '#value' => 'Submit my description',
                         );
    return $form;
}
?>

When the user clicks the submit button, this gets called automatically to verify the input:

<?php
function YMN_TestForm_validate( $form, &$form_state )
{
  // the values submitted can be found like this:
  $msg = $form_state['values']['desc'];
  if (strlen( $msg ) == 0)
  { // this is how you tell Drupal that there is a data error in the user's submission:
     form_set_error('desc', t('You must supply a description of yourself!'));
    // this will cause your form to be re-displayed with the second parameter as a message to the user
    // the first parameter is the $form[] array element that is in error from your form building routine 
  }
  // you can also use this to see more about what's being passed to you:
  error_log( 'YMN_TestForm_validate: form_state is "'.print_r( $form_state, true ).'"' );
  // view your php_error.log file to see the output of error_log()
}
?>

If the above routine does not call form_set_error(), then the form's data is fine, and the submit routine gets called:

<?php
function YMN_TestForm_submit( $form, &$form_state )
{
  // create an 'object' to hold your data to be written to the database:
  $dataToWriteToDB = new stdClass();

  // assign your data to a field with the same name as the database table's field:
  // (the assignment creates the field inside the $dataToWriteToDB 'object')
  $dataToWriteToDB.userDesc = $form_state['values']['desc'];

  // write your record to the named database table:
  $returnVal = drupal_write_record( 'Name_of_your_DB_table', $dataToWriteToDB );
  if (!$returnVal)
  {
    drupal_set_message( 'error writing to database!' );
  }  
}
?>

That should do it.