How to get form values from AHAH callback without submit?

By inteja on 22 Jun 2009 at 07:57 UTC

In the example below, how would I get the value entered into $form['element'] that triggers the AHAH callback, without actually submitting the form?


function test_menu() {
  $items['test'] = array(
    'title' => 'Test',
    'page callback' => 'drupal_get_form',
    'page arguments' => array('test_form'),
    'access arguments' => array('access content')
  );
  $items['test/message_js'] = array(
    'page callback' => 'test_message_js',
    'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    'access arguments' => array('access content')
  );

  return $items;
}

function test_form() {
  $form['element'] = array(
    '#title' => t('Text Entry'),
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#maxlength' => 4,
    '#required' => TRUE,
    '#ahah' => array(
      'event' => 'blur',
      'path' => 'test/message_js',
      'wrapper' => 'target',
      'effect' => 'fade',
    ),
  );
  $form['target'] = array(
    '#type' => 'markup',
    '#prefix' => '<div id="target">',
    '#value' => t('Enter something above to see a dropdown list here.'),
    '#suffix' => '</div>',
  );
  $form['submit'] = array(
    '#type' => 'submit',
    '#value' => t('Submit'),
  );
  return $form;
}

function test_message_js() {

  // How do I get access to $form['element'] value from here, without requiring a form submit?!

  // do something with value of $form['element']

  $form_portion['dropdown'] = array(
  '#title' => t('Drop-down list'),
  '#type' => 'select',
  '#maxlength' => 50,
  '#options' => array(
    'One',
    'Two',
    'Three',
    'Four',
  ),
  '#required' => TRUE,
  );

  $output = drupal_render($form_portion);
  
  drupal_json(array('status' => TRUE, 'data' => $output));
}

Comments

Ditto

sam.clayton@gmail.com commented 30 June 2009 at 16:55

I'd like to know the same thing. I'll be working on something related today.

try $_POST[''element']

maozet commented 4 July 2009 at 19:41

you should try $_POST

I'm still a fair newb at

Jaypan commented 5 July 2009 at 14:50

I'm still a fair newb at ahah, but I believe that you aren't supposed to use $_POST values as it is insecure (drupal 6).

I think that what you want to do is change this:

function test_form() {

to this

function test_form(&$form_state) {

Which gives you access to the values that were entered before the ahah handler was called in $form_state. You can then use conditionals based on $form_state to build your form. For example:

if(!isset($form_state['something']))
{
  // output original form element
}
else
{
  // output new form element
}

You could get the form from

asmdec commented 24 July 2009 at 02:30

You could get the form from the cache:

function test_form() {
  $form = array(
    '#cache' => TRUE,
  );
  // ... the rest of original code
}

function test_message_js() {

  // How do I get access to $form['element'] value from here, without requiring a form submit?!

  $form_state = array('storage' => NULL, 'submitted' => FALSE);
  $form_build_id = $_POST['form_build_id'];
  // Get the form from the cache.
  $form = form_get_cache($form_build_id, $form_state);

  // do something with value of $form['element']
  // ... the rest of original code
}

For more information see Doing AHAH Correctly in Drupal 6 here http://drupal.org/node/331941.

Subroutine to extract data

KeyboardCowboy

English

Denver, CO, USA

commented 16 June 2011 at 20:40

I'm not sure if this is any more secure than calling the $_POST variable directly, but it follows the tutorial in [#331941]. You could call this subroutine from within your AHAH callback function to get an array of the data entered into your form without submitting the form.

function MODULE_get_ahah_form_data() {
  $form_state = array('storage' => NULL, 'submitted' => FALSE);
  $form_build_id = $_POST['form_build_id'];

  // Get the form from the cache.
  $form = form_get_cache($form_build_id, $form_state);

  // Preparing for #5.
  $args = $form['#parameters'];
  $form_id = array_shift($args);
  $form_state['post'] = $form['#post'] = $_POST;
  $form['#programmed'] = $form['#redirect'] = FALSE;

  // Step #5.
  $form = drupal_rebuild_form($form_id, $form_state, $args, $form_build_id);

  return $form['#parameters'][1]['post'];
}

--------
Chris (KeyboardCowboy) - @ChrisAlbrecht