Contact Form 7 Dynamic Text Extension

Contact Form 7 is an excellent WordPress plugin, and the CF7 DTX Plugin makes it even more awesome by adding dynamic content capabilities. While default values in Contact Form 7 are static. CF7 DTX lets you create pre-populated fields based on other values. Some examples might include:

• Auto-filling a URL
• Auto-filling a Post ID, title, or slug
• Pre-populating a Product Number
• Referencing other content on the site
• Populating with post info
• Populating with user info
• Populating with custom fields
• Any value you can write a shortcode for

There are many more case-specific examples. I searched for a solution, and there are some decent hacks out there. Many of them are explored in this forum topic: Contact Form 7 Input Fields Values as PHP Get-Variables. However, they all involved hacking the current Contact Form 7 code, which means next time the plugin is updated their edits will be overwritten. That's bad.

This Dynamic Text Extension plugin provides a more elegant solution that leaves the Contact Form 7 Plugin intact.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

This plugin provides a new tag type for the Contact Form 7 Plugin. It allows the dynamic generation of content for a text input box via any shortcode. For example, it comes with several built-in shortcodes that will allow the Contact Form to be populated from any $_GET PHP variable or any info from the get_bloginfo() function, among others. See below for included shortcodes.

Don't see the shortcode you need on the list? You can write a custom one! Any shortcode that returns a string value can be used here. The included shortcodes just cover the most common scenarios, but the plugin provides the flexibility for you to grab any value you have access to programmatically.

HOW TO USE IT

After installing and activating the plugin, the Contact Form 7 tag generator will have 2 new tag types: Dynamic Text Field and Dynamic Hidden Field. Most of the options will be familiar to Contact Form 7 users. There are two important fields:

Dynamic Value

This field takes a shortcode, with two important provisions:

1. The shortcode should NOT include the normal square brackets ([ and ]). So, instead of [CF7_GET key='value'] you would use CF7_GET key='value' .
2. Any parameters in the shortcode must use single quotes. That is: CF7_GET key='value' and not CF7_GET key="value"

Uneditable Option

As these types of fields should often remain uneditable by the user, there is a checkbox to turn this option on (Not applicable for hidden fields).

INCLUDED SHORTCODES

The plugin includes 2 basic shortcodes for use with the Dynamic Text extension. You can write your own as well - any shortcode will work

PHP GET Variables

Want to use a variable from the PHP GET array? Just use the CF7_GET shortcode. For example, if you want to get the foo parameter from the url http://mysite.com?foo=bar

Enter the following into the "Dynamic Value" input

CF7_GET key='foo'

Your Content Form 7 Tag will look something like this:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_GET key='foo'"]

Your form's dynamicname text input will then be pre-populated with the value of foo, in this case, bar

PHP POST Variables

New in version 1.0.3!

Grab variables from the $_POST array. The shortcode is much like the GET shortcode:

CF7_POST key='foo'

Your Content Form 7 Tag will look something like this:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_POST key='foo'"]

Blog Info

Want to grab some information from your blog like the URL or the sitename? Use the CF7_bloginfo shortcode. For example, to get the site's URL:

Enter the following into the "Dynamic Value" input

CF7_bloginfo show='url'

Your Content Form 7 Tag will look something like this:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_bloginfo show='url'"]

Your form's dynamicname text input will then be pre-populated with your site's URL

Post Info

New in version 1.0.3!

Retrieve information about the current post/page (that the contact form is displayed on). The shortcode works as follows:

CF7_get_post_var key='title' <-- retrieves the Post's Title CF7_get_post_var key='slug' <-- retrieves the Post's Slug

You can also retrieve any parameter from the $post object. Just set that as the key value, for example 'post_date'

The Contact Form 7 Tag would look like:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_get_post_var key='title'"]

Current URL

New in version 1.0.3!

Retrieve the current URL. The shortcode takes no parameters:

CF7_URL

So your Contact Form 7 Tag would look like:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_URL"]

Custom Fields

New in version 1.0.4!

Retrieve custom fields from the current post/page. Just set the custom field as the key in the shortcode.

The dynamic value input becomes:

CF7_get_custom_field key='my_custom_field'

And the tag looks like this:

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_get_custom_field key='my_custom_field'"]

For the purposes of including an email address, you can obfuscate the custom field value by setting obfuscate='on' in the shortcode.

Current User Info

Get data about the current user - assuming they are logged in. Defaults to user name, but you can set the key to any valid value in http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_currentuserinfo

CF7_get_current_user

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_get_current_user"]

Referrer URL

Get the referral URL, if it exists. Note that this is not necessarily reliable as not all browsers send this data.

[dynamictext dynamicname "CF7_referrer"]

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