Yet another update! WordPress Google Form v0.18 available

I have just released another update to the WordPress Google Form plugin.  Within the HTML code that Google generates for their forms, each input field has  unique identifier (e.g entry.0.group, entry.47.group, entry.6.single, etc.).  There was a bug in the Regular Expression which incorrectly handled these identifiers when then had more than one digit.  This bug is fixed in v0.17.

Why do the identifiers need to be processed?  The need to “massage” the identifiers is due to the fact that WordPress is based on PHP and Google Forms are processed by Python.  The two languages handle passing form parameters slightly differently.  When the form is submitted on the WordPress side, the periods in the id are translated to underscores by PHP.  Inputs like check boxes which may contain multiple values are handled using arrays in PHP where as Python allows the use of the same identifier multiple times.  In order to submit the form values to Google, any value received as an array must be converted to a multi-value and the underscores need to be translated back to periods so they match the Python script on the Google side which actually processes the form and stores the result in a Google Spreadsheet.

There was a mistake in the logic which transforms the identifiers from PHP syntax to Python syntax.  It didn’t correctly handle more than one digit in the identifier resulting in the wrong identifier names being sent to Google.  This also caused loss of input values when a required field was not supplied.

Hopefully this will be the last problem!

6 thoughts on “Yet another update! WordPress Google Form v0.18 available

  1. Hi Mike,

    I updated to the latest version WP Google Forms last night and now I am having issues with the admin side. The pages where I have used the plugin are looking fine but I have lost some features from the admin/dashboard area.

    Below are the issues I am having:

    I am not able to make any changes or open any drop-downs on the dashboard or in the widgets screen. I am logging in as an admin. For example, if I click on the arrow to view the widgets in the widgets page, nothing happens. In other words, I can not see or edit the widgets under sidebar. Also, if I click on “Screen options” or “Help” in the Dashboard, even those menu do not open. In the Dashboard, earlier when I used to hover the mouse over various options (for example, Appearance, a pop-up menu used to appear for the child menus under it), now even that is not happening. I wonder if that is because of some settings change. It seems like every thing is frozen. or locked.

    I have been told these problems can happen sometimes because of a plug-in. The only thing that I updated was WP Google Forms. Is there a way to revert back to your last version? Or, can you provide any feedback on this issue that I am having?

    Thanks,
    Gauri

    • The first thing to check would be to deactivate the WordPress Google Form plugin and see if you are still having the same problem. If you can’t do it through the GUI then you can temporarily rename the the top level folder name from wpgform to something else (e.g. wpgform.save). This will definitely deactivate the plugin.

      I have not heard of this problem from anyone else and I am not seeing it in my development area but you may have some odd combination of things happening that I haven’t replicated. There is very little on the Dashboard side that the plugin does other than add the settings menu. Give a couple of these things a try and let me know what you find out.

  2. Hi Mike,

    We were finally able to nail down the culprit. It was another plug-in. Another member of our team had downloaded this plug-in. It’s all working fine now. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused.

    Thanks a lot for a great support for the plugin in addition to providing the plugin.

    Gauri

  3. Hi Mike

    Great plugin! We’ve been using it for a while now and it’s been going good. However, it’s just come to my attention that the submission is playing up a bit. This is the location of the form: http://www.youthwithoutborders.com.au/wordpress/get-involved/joining-2

    My code is:

    [gform form=’https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dFpuWkdpcUF0VGVxOThIN1ZFTGdnVFE6MQ’ conform=’http://www.youthwithoutborders.com.au/wordpress/thank-you-for-joining-the-ywb’]

    When I press “submit”, rather than redirecting me to the page above, it stays on http://www.youthwithoutborders.com.au/wordpress/get-involved/joining-2 and comes up with our inactive page page. Additionally, it does not upload into my google form doc.

    I’ve updated everything and played around with it a lot but I can’t get it to work. Hope you can help.

    Kristian

    • The first thing I noticed is you have the confirm parameter spelled incorrectly, you have it spelled conform! That said, the first thing I would do would be to remove the confirm parameter and see if the form submits using the default Google confirmation page and see if it works. Check your e-mail, I have some other questions too.

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