Formidable Forms is the most robust data-driven application-building software available (in my opinion). The sky really is the limit when it comes to what you can do, from simple contact forms to robust applications good enough for the government to use. Prior to Strategy 11 developing the visual views addon, many of us would code HTML Tables to display our data within a view. This was time-consuming and sometimes cumbersome. Now with Visual Views, you can create an HTML Table view at the drop of a hat, code written for you by FF. The problem is, now how can you search it in real-time? How can you export the view as a PDF, Copy the Contents of the filtered view or download the view as a CSV quickly?
All of these things were almost impossible with the old HTML Tables, without adding some custom code to each view, etc. While creating an application for a local governmental agency, and building views by hand time and time again, I decided I wanted to look for another option. I knew I wanted to use JQuery Data-Tables, but if you are not a developer, it can be complicated to implement onto your server. Chris Adams of FDM Digital wrote up a great tutorial a few years ago, but there had to be an even easier way to do it. So I set out to get a shortcode that could be implemented easily in a view and give me the same results. What started as a basic PHP Snippet from Andrew K, DSFF has morphed into what it is now, having been modified for much more functionality.
Now, here we are. Datatables-Shortcode for Formidable Forms is a .json file exported from the Code Snippets Plugin, that is implemented as a shortcode that turns any HTML table wrapped in the shortcode into a fully functional JQuery Data-Table. The shortcode allows for the pre-determined sort of a column and the order in which it will be sorted. It further allows you to export your filtered view as a PDF, CSV, or copy the content to your notepad.
The best part is you can now search that HTML table in real-time and choose how many entries you want to see. Implementing JQuery Data-Tables into a Formidable Forms Table View has NEVER been this easy.
Simply purchase the file, then import it into the Code Snippets Plugin and activate it.
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Greetings, do you have any live examples using the Datatables-Shortcode for Formidable Forms. I’d like to see how it looks/works before buying the code snippet. Thank you!
Thanks for asking Ellen! I suggest you contact the the product’s developer. I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer your question.
Jones Web Designs
Thanks Victor! I thought i was, my bad. 🙂
This code snippet JSON works very well for sorting and searching on a table view created in Formidable Forms 6.7.2. The directions worked as described.
I decided to share two things that I think kept it from working initially (I recreated the issues and fixes, so I think these are cause and effect, but I did go down a rabbit hole of troubleshooting):
1. Had to uncheck Autoptimize’s “Javascript code” setting and clear the cache for it to work at all.
2. I needed to make the Page Size setting be empty under the FF table view’s Advanced Settings. Otherwise it did not sort and search across multiple pages, only the displayed page. I had previously set this to test while trying to get other sort solutions to work.
I had to adjust a few of the datatables styles, but the custom CSS I had already applied to the table was mostly maintained.
This snippet was definitely worth the money spent.
Thank you very much to Walter Jones for making it available!
hello , so have you solved the issue of must keeping page size empty , because its making views too slow to load , thanka