How to make submit button work in form themes

Question

I am trying to create a form which calls an external template file to format the form but ended up into a typical issue. This is what I was doing. I created a hook menu and called a theme, in the theme declared the template, and in template called the form elements and rendered along with html code. Everything is working fine except the submit button. If I render form directly, submit is working, or if I use drupal_get_form in menu page callback, it works (again template is not getting applied). I'm confused what am I doing wrong. I am a newbie so excuse me if this is a repetitive or stupid question.

Here is my code. My module file named agents.module

<?php
function agents_menu(){
  $items=array();

  $items['myform']=array(
    'title'=>'Form',
    'description'=>'Submit Form into database',
    'page callback'=>'agents_form', 
    'access callback'=>TRUE,
    'access arguments'=>array('access content'),
    'type'=>MENU_CALLBACK,
  );

  return $items;
}

function agents_form(){
  return theme('students');
}

function agents_theme(){
  return array(
    'students' => array(
        'render element' => 'form',
        'template' => 'customTemplate',
    ),
  );
}

function students_form($form, &$form_state){
  $form = array();
  $form['efname'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => 'First Name',
    '#size' => 28,
    '#maxlength' => 10,
    '#required' => TRUE, 
  );

  $form['elname'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => 'Last Name',
    '#size' => 28,
    '#maxlength' => 10,
    '#required' => TRUE,
  );
  $form['submit_btn'] = array(
    '#type'=>'submit',
    '#value'=>'Submit',
    '#submit' => 'agents_myForm_submit'
  );
  return $form;
}

function students_form_validate($form, &$form_state){
  dpm($form_state['ename']);
}

function students_form_submit(){
  dpm('into submit');
}

and my customTemplate.tpl.php code looks like this

<?php 
  dpm(drupal_get_form('students_form'));
  $form = drupal_get_form('students_form');
?>
<div class="left_div">
  <?php print render($form['efname']); ?>
  <?php print render($form['elname']); ?>
</div>
<div class="right_div">
  <?php print render($form['submit_btn']); ?>
</div>
<?php
  dpm(render($form['form_build_id']));
  print render($form['form_build_id']);
  print render($form['form_token']);
  print render($form['form_id']);
?>
<?php print drupal_render_children($form);

I am a newbie to drupal, and I was not able to figure out what am I doing wrong. If I directly render the form without rendering submit individually, (i.e. print render($form) ) it works fine. It would be a great savior of the day if someone helps me cross this hurdle.

Answer 1

You don't want to run your drupal_get_form from inside your template, you want to render it from your page callback. You'll instead declare the theme for your form with $form['#theme'] = 'students' in order to use your template.

function agents_form() {
  $form = drupal_get_form('students_form');
  return render($form);
}


function students_form($form, &$form_state){
  $form = array();
  $form['efname'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => 'First Name',
    '#size' => 28,
    '#maxlength' => 10,
    '#required' => TRUE,
  );

  $form['elname'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => 'Last Name',
    '#size' => 28,
    '#maxlength' => 10,
    '#required' => TRUE,
  );
  $form['submit_btn'] = array(
    '#type'=>'submit',
    '#value'=>'Submit',
  );

  $form['#theme'] = 'students';

  return $form;
}

You also had a '#submit' attribute on your submit button element but it would need to be set as an array rather than a string '#submit' => array('agents_myForm_submit'), However I didn't see that submit function defined so I removed it.

Then your customTemplate.tpl.php can be as simple as:

<div class="left_div">
  <?php print render($form['efname']); ?>
  <?php print render($form['elname']); ?>
</div>
<div class="right_div">
  <?php print render($form['submit_btn']); ?>
</div>
<?php print drupal_render_children($form); ?>

Answer 2

Your page callback should reference the $form building function directly. In that case that means changing

'page callback'=>'agents_form', 

to

'page callback'=>'students_form', 

Don't worry about wrapping it in a theme() function, it is unnecessary.

Note that the key you use in $items[KEY] determines the path of the form. So once you make the first change suggested here, you should be able to view the form at http://yoursite.com/myform