Option/function to return a more complex form data structure

Hi-
This is related to my post here about helper functions for GF. On a recent project, I needed to use the entry object returned by gform_after_submission() to retrieve all of the responses in a checkbox field. As far as I know, the only way to do this is to do a linear walk over the keys in the entry object, doing a string match for the ID of that field as a prefix (i.e. if the field ID is 3, you look for 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, etc.).

It would be really great if there was a way to get back an entry object that wasn't just a flat array. Using the example above, something like:

$entry[3] = [ {3.1's value}, {3.2's value}, ... {3.x's value} ];

would be awfully spiffy and make the retrieval of all of the values returned from a multi-valued field much easier.

If you want to get really fancy, it would also be great if fields could also be referenced by name, so that one could do:

$entry['checkbox_field_name'] = [{value1}, {value2}, {value3}...{valueX}] ;

If there were two fields with the same name, you would suffix the name with the field ID, as in:

$entry['checkbox_field_name_3'] = [ {value1}, {value2}, {value3} ... ] ;

The rationale for this request is code that says:

$entry['checkbox_field_name']

is much easier to grok than:

$entry['3']

It also seems a little less fragile to me, since if that field is no longer #3 for some reason, the code doesn't break.

Thanks for considering this idea!

-- dNb

Super, thanks!
-- dNb

P.S. There's no rush (I know one of them is sunning himself as we speak).

I found it easier to do by using the form object and adding code to flip through the entry object when it comes across a checkbox field. It's easy enough that I would think it would be a waste of time and too much trouble for backward compatibility to change the actual entry object.

Hi Alex-
Sorry for being so slow to respond to your reply (didn't get an email notification). Let me see if I can answer your questions:

1) backward compatibility but providing a non-flat entry object when requested - I appreciate that you are trying to preserve this:

There are a number of ways to handle this. A few ideas:

• Some APIs (like the old LDAP C SDK) provide additional calls that return extended versions of an object, so you could have explicit hooks that did it ("gform_after_submission_ex()").
• Some have you pass a flag into the call to request the enhanced version.
• Some provide helper methods (get_all_values_ex()) that you can call on/from the object.
• Some sort of global flag (my least favorite idea, where you say $GF::ObjectVersion = 2).

2) where to get the field name if indexing by field names: I'm suggesting you get it from the 'label' (or 'adminLabel' if set) form field value.

... or, see my post about a library of helper functions. A helper function that takes in a flat entry object but returns one that is easier to work with would also be viable (albeit a bit of a performance hit). You could imagine something like:

$better_entry = make_nice_entry($entry); # bad name, I know
$better_entry['colorcheckbox'] would now be a list ('red', 'blue') based on the form choice.

In regard to Ben's response: Ben, could you post a snippet of code? I'm not sure I understand what you are suggesting and why having an entry object that was easier to work with would be a bad thing if backward compatibility could exist for some number of versions.