Drupal 8 has come up with inbuilt features. Drupal 8 has added new contact forms which will provide more functionality to the site to be used as personal or site-wide contact forms. The new web form module in Drupal 8 is a feature-packed option for web developers. As a PHP development company, we find Drupal8 to be quite useful especially for the eCommerce websites.

The Webform is an Open Source form builder and submission manager for Drupal 8. The Webform Module for Drupal provides all the features expected from an enterprise proprietary form builder combined with an openness of Drupal.

In this post, we are discussing basic reasons behind supporting Drupal 8 webform module.

Stored in YAML

The Webform module uses Drupal’s Form API elements and stores them in YAML configuration. As a web developer, there are two big reasons to use YAML. First, it is so easy to manipulate fields. All of the details of the field are nested on one page. The changes in the information can be easily done. Copy + Paste command will be used for duplicate fields. All types of Webform can be saved in Yami. This allows duplicating elements from one form to another. However, that does not mean, forms have to be built this way. Another way of designing forms is by Drag + Drop by enabling the Webform UI module. These GUI enabled forms are exposed to much more customization. The UI and Yami features within the Webform module make it more simple and elegant.

The Test Feature

Testing forms can be tedious especially for the bigger and complex forms. The Webform module has a built-in testing feature. Simply click on the Test tab and Drupal will load your Webform with all of the fields filled in. You can also preset the information that will be filled in.

Multistep Forms

Drupal has another feature to create multi- step forms. These are called wizard pages which divide up your form into multiple steps or pages. There are numerous use cases for these multi-step forms and the Webform module made the entire process effortless.

Results Management

Form submissions are normally stored in databases but using Drupal8 it can also be flagged with administrative notes.

Results management features include:

• Flagging
• Administrative notes
• Submissions as HTML and YAML
• Customizable reports
• Downloading results as a CSV to Google Sheets or MS Excel
• Saving of download preferences perform
• Automatically purging old submissions based on certain criteria

Access Controls

The web form provides full control on activities like form submission, post form submission and access over webform’s results. Access control model can be used for providing specific control to users.

Access controls allow users to:

• Create new forms
• Update forms
• Delete forms
• View submissions
• Update submissions
• Delete submissions
• View selected elements
• Update selected elements

Reusable Templates

The Webforms in Drupal 8 has in built templates and multiple example forms. These forms can be updated or reused for different organizations.

Starter templates include:

• Contact Us
• Donation
• Employee Evaluation
• Issue
• Job Application
• Job Seeker Profile
• Registration
• Session Evaluation
• Subscribe
• User Profile

Example web forms include:

• Elements
• Basic layout
• Flexbox layout
• Input masks
• Options
• Wizard

Internationalization

Forms and configuration can be translated into multiple languages using Drupal’s configuration translation system.

Drupal Integration

Forms can be attached to nodes or displayed as blocks. Web forms can also have dedicated SEO-friendly URLs. The elements used in web forms are like a render array that can easily be altered using custom hooks and/or plugins.

Conclusion

Many more new features can be added to the forms using Drupal8 which are not mentioned here. Our PHP developers are experts in implementing Drupal 8 webforms. If you are looking for the designing of webforms in Drupal8, you can contact us immediately.