Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook [Anglais] [Broché]

With 249 pages divided into 12 chapters this book is the ideal starting point for both beginners as well as more experienced users regarding webforms. It is a step-by-step guide on how to start right from downloading and installing the Webform module through configuring and setting user roles and permissions. The book is packed with exercises and discussions. Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook gives one the tools needed to turn ones Drupal website into an interactive information-gathering superhighway.

The Webform module consistently ranked in the top 15 of the most installed Drupal contributed modules, and it facilitates two distinct, yet related, sets of functionality. First, it is a great tool for creating forms designed to capture required data from users, such as a customized Contact Us form for example. Secondly, Webform has a backend interface for website administrators to work with the submitted data. We can see then that Webform is designed for scenarios where many people (for example, users, subscribers, and so on) are submitting data handled by a small group of administrative users.

BTW If your site is hosted on a server where you experience difficulties with e-mail, this book might be of help (psst... one of the solutions might be to try specifying a different e-mail address format).
What the book covers
* how to install and configure the Webform module
* introduction of Webform components, building, and testing your first Webform module.
* it covers the Webform backend and explains how to work with data submitted to forms.
* it explores the availability of other Webform components.
* it covers how to customize the form's user interface and feedback to respondents.
* it helps discover additional modules to enhance the user experience of forms, protecting with CAPTCHA, and an introduction to the Webform API.
* it explains how to make use of the Drupal theming layer to give the form a look and feel of its own.
* it helps create custom modules that interact with user submitted data, adding custom validation rules.
* it explains how to build your own custom Webform component from the ground up.
* it discusses carrying out multiple actions with a single click.
* it explains how to make use of extra modules to produce customized submitted data listings and covers how to keep track of changes made to submitted data.
* it also discusses displaying and hiding fields based on previous input, validating input data on the client side, and importing submissions.

In short, for all Drupalistas struggling with forms, this book is exactly what users of all levels have been waiting for. It is clear, concise and clever. And it will help you grow, and make the interactivity of your sites better, much better.

Webform is a module that has equal parts lovers and haters... On one hand it makes creating complex forms with no technical knowledge extremely easy. On the other a lot of it's functionality is handled in a 'non-Drupal' way, although this has got somewhat better recently.

A book covering just one module (and related) is always going to be a tough job, and Vernon Denny does a mixed job, covering a lot of theoretical form design and best practices that most would probably feel is out of place in a 'technical' book, but is actually extremely helpful and valid, putting some context and explanation behind why Webform does certain things a certain way. There is also a reasonable amount of padding though, with repetition around how to do certain standard Drupal tasks and adding on some Webform extension modules that feel a little superfluous to what is currently being discussed. I guess you have to assume no knowledge for your readers, but at times, there's way too many concepts going on at once that will probably put off a beginner reader who just wants to create forms, not learn theming or module development.

The negatives aside, the books thoroughness also prepares any reader for creating some complex forms, with conditional fields, submissions processing, submissions actions, the presentation Of data, spam protection, listings of some useful webform extensions and how to cope with some of the more common webform 'gotchas'. All topics are handled in a clear, concise, but detailed manner, exposing the power of the webform module and showing any current users of services such as Google forms or survey monkey the potential they're missing.

In the book "Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook" Vernon Denny takes us on a journey through the various aspects concerning the popular Webform Drupal module. Readers of this book are shown step by step how to leverage the power of this module, and associated other contributed modules that extend its functionality, to create everything from simple contact forms to complex, multipage and conditional forms.

The book is written in the cookbook format, where each chapter contains a number of 'recipes' that users could pick out to perform a specific task they had in mind. I have the feeling that the book is somewhat forced inside this format, and doesn't suit it very well. Much of the recipes depend upon knowledge that was explained earlier, or configuration that was performed in earlier recipes. So I think readers will get the most of it by reading the book in a linear way anyway, and just skipping sections they might already be familiar with.

This minor criticism aside, the book covers an extensive range of topics related to webforms, that will surely help you get the most out of its functionality if you previously only created some simple forms with the module.

Lots of time is spent on form components: starting with a detailed overview of the default components that Webform comes with, over contributed modules providing extra functionality, such as the "Select (or Other)" module and "Options Element" module, up to writing your own custom Webform components.

I was also pleased to see that the topic of form validation got quite some attention, by covering the basic functionality provided by Webform itself, as well as the Webform Validation (a module written by yours truly) and Clientside Validation modules. With the help of useful examples, the author gives a clear overview of the possibilities that are available in the area of form validation.

Furthermore the book also covers other important topics in great details, such as working with and evaluating form submissions, importing & exporting submission data and writing custom modules to implement specific needs you might have for your form(s).

This book is primarily targeted towards site builders, not necessarily Drupal developers, so the required programming skills to understand what's going on are pretty limited. Readers without PHP knowledge should get pretty far in achieving their goals without writing any PHP, with the help of this book.

Overall a nicely written and detailed walk through the Drupal Webform universe, that should help you achieve more than you thought was possible with Webform after a first glance.