Tutor Registration form in open source?

October 3, 2007 11:55 AM

Open Source Product or PHP Class to handle registration forms?

I am helping a student association establish a way of registering volunteer tutors and providing access for teachers to find willing tutors in subjects relevant to their students.

I have enough php code ability to hack-up an open source product or use someone's class to develop something useful. I have given hacking up PHPList a try (and may still go that route), but that product is really focussed on mailing newsletters, which is a feature we do not really need, so it seems like overkill.

What I need is the following:
* the ability to construct a form that provides valid data, including "required" sections. This form needs to include radio buttons and multi-choice click box options (ie. we need the product to handle many-to-many relationships in the database).

* a granular back-end that gives 1) students the ability to change their info as needed 2) teachers the ability to see some, but not all of the information 3) administrators who need to see everything.

Any routes for this?

posted by Greebie to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Sounds like a good job for one of the php frameworks like CakePHP, Code Igniter, or Symfony. A list of 10 or so frameworks is here.
posted by stuboo at 12:34 PM on October 3, 2007

Forms... permissions.... I'd bet that Drupal would be simpler than a framework for this.
posted by tmcw at 1:31 PM on October 3, 2007

ooooh. Good thinking tmcw. I've not used Drupal but have been enamored with frameworks lately. From what I have read though, Drupal does seem like a good fit.
posted by stuboo at 1:42 PM on October 3, 2007

Yeah, this is actually a very good fit for Drupal.

If you do go that route, the book Pro Drupal Development provides nicely organized guide to writing Drupal modules, but for your needs you might be able to get away with a stock install: sounds like you just need to flip on the Profile module and set up a few roles.
posted by fishfucker at 2:05 PM on October 3, 2007

CodeIgniter's validation class would work for part 1 pretty easily, and CodeIgniter could handle the rest, too.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:44 PM on October 3, 2007

Good job folks. I considered using Joomla, but Joomla just isn't hack-friendly [or even form-friendly] enough. I've used Drupal alot less, but I guess it's about time I looked at the architecture for that product.

As I think of it, they may want to migrate their website to Drupal later on as well. And then they want to get into learning management too (DrupalEd?). So Drupal sounds like a very useful (and in retrospect, obvious) choice.

Thanks!
posted by Greebie at 6:37 PM on October 3, 2007