Deleting submissions through website

[frostyintrepid]

Hi All,

I am actually looking for a solution that's similar to the Submissions Account module, to allow users to delete their submissions instead of editing.

Hoping to get someone who can help me here

[Ben]

Tricky one... Mostly it's a question of how to manage the permissions to ensure that only the person who created the submission can delete it. I think your best bet it to stick with the Submission Accounts module, like you suggested.

Here's one solution (in brief):
1. after creating your form, create a new "Delete Account" field, with two options: Yes & No. Set it to "No" by default (this can be done by just passing a hidden field in your form with that value).
2. Assign the field to whatever View is used by the Submission Accounts module for your form. Now when the user can log in through the Submission Accounts module, they'd see the "Delete Account" field, which they can set to "Yes" if they want.
3. Create a new View for you, the administrator. Give it one filter: "Delete Account" => "Yes". Whenever you log in, select the View. That'll show all submissions that are slated for deletion. Select 'em all and delete 'em.

Perfect? Nope! But workable.

Another solution would be to again use the Submission Pre-Parser module. This time, create a Rule to act on the "Update Submission" event. For the PHP, it would check the value of the Delete Account field. If set to Yes, it would delete the actual submission then redirect the user somewhere. If you're interested in doing this one, let me know and I'll explain it more fully.

- Ben

[frostyintrepid]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the prompt reply. Perhaps you could fill me in more on using the pre parser module? TIA!

[Ben]

Hey Frosty,

Sure, no problem! Here's how it would all fit together.

1. First, install the Submission Accounts and Submission Pre-Parser modules. Module installation instructions are found here:
http://docs.formtools.org/userdoc/index....ng_modules

2. Configure the Submission Accounts module with your form (I suspect you've already done this, but if not, see the module's help doc for more info on that: http://modules.formtools.org/submission_...tation.php)

3. As mentioned in the previous post, add a new "Delete Account" field to your form. Make it a dropdown or radio button group - just so long as there are two and only two options: "Yes" and "No". Assign that new field to the View that's used by the Submission Account. In other words, that field will now be visible to all users logging in via the Submission Accounts module. (Check to make sure!)

4. The final step it to configure the Submission Pre-Parser. Select the module from your Modules page and create a new rule.

Status: Enabled
When Executed: "When submission is edited"
Rule Name: "User: self-delete accounts"
Form(s): (select the appropriate form)
PHP Code:

PHP Code:

if ($vars["infohash"]["delete_account_field"] == "Yes")
{
  $form_id = $vars["form_id"];
  $view_id = $vars["infohash"]["view_id"];
  $submission_id = $vars["submission_id"];
  ft_delete_submission($form_id, $view_id, $submission_id);

  header("location: http://www.yoursite.com/account_deleted.php");
  exit;
} 


In this code, I've assumed your form field name for the "Delete Account" field is called "delete_account_field". So just change that string on the very first line if you've called it something else.

This code will ALWAYS delete the submission if they - or any other Form Tools user (you, the admin or any clients) - set the "Delete Account" field to "Yes". Since we've just deleted the submission, if the user was logged in through the Submission Accounts module, they won't have anywhere to return to. So to prevent this scenario from occurring, we automatically redirect to the http://www.yoursite.com/account_deleted.php page (which you'll need to define). That would contain some blurb for the user to let them know their account was deleted.

So don't forget that if the administrator or clients uses that field to delete the submission, they'll ALSO be redirected to that URL. So perhaps it's best if you only include that field on the View that the user themselves see through the Submission Accounts module.

And that's it! Hope the above was fairly clear!

- Ben

[frostyintrepid]

Hmm I gave it a try but it doesn't work. Perhaps I didn't do it correctly.

I basically followed your instructions and add that field to the submissions account module page, which is at http://ssamonthlyshoot.com/nyt/editregistration.html. After login, it just didn't remove the data. Pretty sure I didn't do something right here

[Ben]

It's probably some simple thing. :-) If you like, email me your Form Tools login info and I'll log in and take a look at how it's all set up. My email is: formtools@encorewebstudios.com.

- Ben

[Ben]

Hey Frosty,

Thanks for the login info. It's all set up now.

There's two final things you'll need to do:
1. Remove the "Delete this registration?" question from the login form. Unfortunately we can't use this mechanism to delete submissions right from the login form. The "Delete Account" field has to appear in the page AFTER they log in.
2. Add a hidden field to your form (I was editing form ID#1,):
<input type="hidden" name="delete_account_field" value="No" />

I tested it out and everything seemed to work fine. You can obviously tweak it from here: I created a new View based on the "All Submissions" View, except that it contains the additional "Delete Account" field. That's the View that the user sees when they log in. If they change it to "Yes", their account is deleted and they're redirected to that URL you specified.

Two things cropped up while I was adding it:
1. In the Submission Accounts set up for that particular form (form ID #1), the "Username" and "Email" field had to be mapped to the same form field (Email).
2. The form HAS to be set to "online" in order for the users to be able to log in and edit their submission. This is currently a requirement of the Submission Accounts module.

I hope this is all making somewhat sense...! Try creating a new submission, logging in with it and seeing how it behaves once you click "Yes" for the Delete Account field. Hopefully it was what you had in mind!

Let me know of any questions!

- Ben

[frostyintrepid]

Thanks Ben, I finally got it all figured out.

One question, say at the login page, when the user keys in the wrong login and password, can they get redirected to another custom page?

[Ben]

Glad it all got figured out! :-)

And sure - to do this, just pass a hidden field in your form:

<input type="hidden" name="invalid_login_redirect_url" value="http://www.yoururl.com" />

With the appropriate URL. You should be redirected to that URL with an error message flag passed in the query string. The possible query string values are:

no_form_id
no_username
no_password
invalid_form_id
form_inactive
login_incorrect

Ack! I just realized I didn't document this feature. Rats. Back to documenting... :-)

[frostyintrepid]

Hi Ben,

I tired to recreate the same thing for another form but couldn't get it to work. Made sure I have a hidden form value as well. Any idea why?

Glad it all got figured out! :-)

And sure - to do this, just pass a hidden field in your form:

<input type="hidden" name="invalid_login_redirect_url" value="http://www.yoururl.com" />

With the appropriate URL. You should be redirected to that URL with an error message flag passed in the query string. The possible query string values are:

no_form_id
no_username
no_password
invalid_form_id
form_inactive
login_incorrect

Ack! I just realized I didn't document this feature. Rats. Back to documenting... :-)