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If you aren´t really into programming and all that stuff then once you get into Fabrik it is great and you can create some really good basic forms.

The free support is even really good as well. I got 2 answers within a day which is good for open source. Even the freee part of the forum has some answers and I would imagine that if you pay the 20$ you would get great support and the extra info int he subscription only forum would probably be good. I´ll definitely pay for the subscription.

It could do with offering more samples to work with as it only comes with 1 but then maybe they are available in the forum and I just can´t find them. I have posted another question so I´m sure I´ll have the answer from them.

I tried all the forms and although I liked the way FacileForm allows you to create forms it was useless with Joomfish as there is no compatibility with them.

I always thought that handling databases and forms are not my cup of tea, being and hobbyist webmaster. Recently when I thought of adding this functionality on my site, did lot of research on various Joomla components that can enhance functionality of my site.
Read lot of reviews about Fabrik, but I realized that is was practically impossible for newbie's to use that. Today, after couple of trials, its functional on my site, Great thanks to its Forum, where I got proper support from admin.
Though I agree that its bit tricky for novice like me, but if you are firm and ready to learn and decided that yes I CAN DO IT, then its not all that difficult.

This is a great extension that will enable you to build fantastic custom apps for your Joomla site with much less knowledge and time than would be required to so it from scratch. The power of this component is quite amazing. But with power and flexibility (of which Fabrik has both) comes complexity. A simple form that is stored in a DB or emailed is quite easy to create in Fabrik. Many people seem to think that Fabrik will make creating complex application easy... not so. Complex applications are by definition... well... complex! Fabrik will make it much easier to create a complex application than doing it from scratch BUT it still takes a lot of work and time.

The support for both subscribing and non-subscribing members is excellent. My application was nearly complete by the time I registered. I wanted to be absolutely certain I could accomplish my goal prior to spending any money. The team there is willing to go above and beyond to make their customers happy. Only down side to the support is that there are really only 2 people who do support. They do an excellent job but they only have so many hours in a day.

In short, if you are willing to invest some time to learn this application, it will reward you with the power to easily create powerful custom applications for your site. IF you just need some simple forms stored in a DB or emailed, it can do that quite easily too!

Although this tool takes a day or two to get into and to be able to use it, it is the one tool that is needed when starting up a joomla site that has any sort of forms in it. Rob always gets back to me and has sorted out two issues which I have had. They have created an excellent tool without which I would still be busy coding and creating forms.

It is a snap to integrate into the joomla framework and allows you to create edit, delete, update and insert forms and tables with virtually a click of a button. The 20 Pounds for the documentation is actually a joke as the product is worth much more than that. I think Rob has done an outstanding job and with all the energy he puts into the project it should be a roaring success.

Thanks Rob
John Weber - johnkweber

I'm still wrapping my head around the details of how it works, but the documentation was and continues to be very helpful in clarifying things. I've been looking for a DB driven form development tool like this, specifically to develop some collaboration solutions for our site, and this fits the need almost perfectly Better than Dreamweaver CS3 with a a suite of DB extensions (full set from Interakt, now Adobe Developer Toolkit) has.

I'm used to developing forms and applications in Remedy ARS (client/server DB RAD tool)and much of the concepts and functionality in Fabrik seem pretty straight forward with some nice shortcuts built in.

Rob (developer)was very responsive to my intitial questions on the forum, and willing to make reasonabl tweaks to accomodate new functionality required. The new version (2.0) while still being developed looks *very* nice and will be a great deal easier to expand/extend.

Hugh (support and Dev assitance)is a great community manager and good at helping keep things on track, even if he's prone to threatening cartoonish violence to keep things moving ;-).

My general impression is that this is *not* a pick it up as you go extension like many of them are. This is a serious development tool for those looking to build database and email driven forms and applications for their Joomla site. DO NOT skip the documentation/sample data and tutorials and expect to be able to accomplish anything. If you're willing to spend some time learning the tool, this one is a goldmine of possibilities and seems to have a bright future.

I think a lot of the folks that have provided lowish ratings expected something less complicated/powerful and easier to use. ::shrug:: Anyway... After looking for a solid year for something similar to Fabrik, I'm overjoyed to have found it, and the fact that it's a Joomla extension makes it even better!

James

What a great component.
Actually I was searching for a Excel component to implement into my site. But the only one i could find was com_spread.
Not a user friendly component so uninstall and delete.
Than I'll found Fabrik. Woh , This was great because it is quite easy to understand and to create forms.

Out from the database you can easily export the records into an Excel sheet.

The only thing i'd like to have, is a feature that will reset the record counter to zero. When I delete all the records with the front-end interfase. Record counter is not going back to "0". Now I have to do this manually with PHPMYADMIN.

So maybe in the next update!!


Frits

As a veteran internet application developer my economic viability relies on my companies ability to write tools that aid in developing applications or even other tools. Some of these tools can take hundreds of man hours costing easily over $10,000. This tool just cut a fifty man hours off a project for us. I slapped down the 40 american dollars they were asking for the documents, as that was the least I could do for what I received as a free application. $40.00 for a full fledged tool that works is a steal. I feel guilty for using it!

Not sure how any one could whine about that little amount of money. Any app that does anything of value has a learning curve. I spent a few hours and I am comfortable. Great job fellows.

I give this five stars!

Great work, this is a very good comoponent

Installation - 10
User Friendlyness - 8

Very well programmed clean and easy to customize

best thing about this it is Open Source i want to thank the developer for making this open source, This component can easily be commerical and gain good value for the hard work which has been put in it...

I am frustrated with this component. On the surface it appears very good, however, basic functionality does not appear to work, and as they require payment for support I am unable to find out why things don't appear to work as they should, without paying and possibly finding out that it isn't possible.

For example, I would consider table sorting to be a basic functionality of any application. However sorting doesn't seem to work, it takes no notice of what sorting method I apply. Also, as there is no documentation and their FAQ section is poor, I don't even know where to begin to look for the code to change manually. I am not a complete novice with joomla, PHP & mySQL.

So the dilemma is, if I pay, I have no protection against being informed that what I require is not possible. The amount of money is not a lot, but if you were to pay £20 for everything you tested, wasn't suitable and didn't use, you wouldn't have much left over for anything else.

I tried several form processing components for Joomla. But fabrik is the best one out there. I tried it after seeing "Editor's pick" for this component. I had no issue with installation and it comes with a sample contact us form which helped me to understand it quickly without even a manual.

It has some minor bugs but it is not a road block for implementing my forms. Give it a try. you may like it.

Stayed away from this, given the previous comments. I was unable to get 2 other forms components to do what I wanted, so I figured I'd give it a try.

Not difficult at all. I would suggest you pay for the subscription, as the initial tutorial really helps a lot. I had my first form up and running within 3 hours of trial and error.

This component is super-cool. I think those negative reviews from last year must have been with a less mature version of the component because I installed this thing and used the sample data as the starting point for my own "Request a quote" form which I managed to set up within 10 minutes of installing the component. So, literally, 15 minutes after downloading the extension, I had a working form on my site. Just make sure you don't forget to install the sample data immediately after you install the component your first time. It's easy to miss the demo data link if you're not paying attention, but if you install it, it will make it much easier to get started quickly. If you're experienced with building forms and web apps from scratch, you'll think this is a total breeze to use. Unfortunately, the stable 1.x version doesn't have any kind of "dependent" form field functionality, so for instance, you can't have a couple of radio buttons that toggle a set of dependent fields on and off. You can still hand-code that kind of functionality within the auto-generated form and the Fabrik forums have detailed instructions on how to do that if you can find the right thread. Apparently a "dependent form fields" feature is slated for version 2, which is currently in alpha. Other than that I have no complaints after a whopping 30 minutes of using the extension, so three cheers for Fabrik!

I have installed fabrik 1.0.3 and then fabrik 1.0.4 . I have experimented with both versions, to various environments and my final conclusion is that this component is full, and i mean FULL of bugs. Completely instable.

Many of its supposed functions does not work at all. This component sould not used in a productive environment. The other frustrating thing is that the documentation is really poor. There are 4 tutorials, very very basic. And it is not for free.

Currently i am trying to fix some of the bugs using the forum. The support seem to be quite immediate but still no fix for the bugs.

And for documentation and support is not free! I do not know advanced PHP, but i know SQL and i can figure out how the code works. I think the code of fabrik is quite messy... If i am not going to resolve problems with the product i am moving to something else like facile forms, which i hope is going to proved more reliable...

In fabrik basic db features, like primary keys, autoincrementing, creation of tables and corresponding fields does not work reliably...

Anyhow the framework and the potential of the product is good! But for using it as a stable component i do NOT recommend...And they get paid in order to built their application and then sell it i guess :)

In fact the community who is paying in order to receive support are helping these people to develop their product...

This is an absolute Must Have for any serious Joomla site. Don't be put off by negative reviews based on complexity. Yes, it has a rich admin GUI, which could be confusing at first. That's because it is such an incredibly powerful tool. But you don't have to use all the bells and whistles.

Creating a basic form is as simple as pointing, clicking and setting a few obvious options. Create a Form. Create a Group. Add Elements to the Group. Associate the Group with the Form. Associate the Form with your Joomla menu structure. Done.

But that is just scratching the surface. Lets say you are building a Contact Us form, and want to preset the "Your E-mail" Element if the user is logged in. Just go to that Element in the GUI, select "Eval this text" and enter any valid PHP to fetch the standard Joomla $my->email variable, like this:

global $my;
return $my->email ? $my->email : "Enter your email address";

Of course, you can do the same for the "Your Name" Element using $my->name.

A slightly more advanced example might be building a custom order query form for VirtueMart orders, so you need a dropdown with the logged on users unfilled orders. This is as simple as adding a 'database join' Element which pulls in the relevant details from the VirtueMart tables. The GUI easily lets you create the necessary database JOIN and WHERE clauses to populate a dropdown with anything you want.

As well as reading SQL data, Fabrik also lets you store submitted form data back into the database, as well as (or instead of) emailing it. You can use this for simple things like keeping a record of all your Contact Us submissions. Or you can use it to control the flow in multiple "chained" form submissions. Or you can get as creative as you want, using the intuitive 'database join' features, and (say) allow users to change their main profile details from a custom form.

Fabrik also lets you define SQL table 'views' in the front end, as well as simple forms. And of course everything can be access controlled using the standard Joomla group features. So it's trivial to build a front end admin interface for viewing, adding and removing table rows.

I've had Fabrik installed for exactly 24 hours, and I have a very professional looking, working custom form for querying the status of VM orders, and a front end admin interface for processing the requests.

And I don't even have the Fabrik documentation. I accidentally used a PayPal e-check, so I have to wait a few days to get access to the site. I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas Day, I can't wait to see what I can do once I have the docs, examples, plugins, etc.

Summary ... yes it helps if you known at least a little about SQL and PHP. But not essential. Get this extension, and invest a few hours in it - you won't regret it!

After twenty eight years of IT experience, from small shops to one of the largest holdings corporations in the U.S.; on every imaginable platform, OS, programming language, whatever; in every imaginable job title, from Fiel Engineer and Application Support Specialist to Systems Architect, responsible for some very large projects, there are not very many things in IT that amazes me these days. This extension does. Also, I have used many others and they don't come close.

I have not looked at any documentation, whatever and I have had very few problems implementing this extension. Granted, there are a few items fully documented on the Fabrik Forum during installation. I had no problem finding these an implementing them.

Once in the package, there are plenty of helpful tooltips, etc. When used with the forum search, it is rather easy to use. But, I speak from a different perspective and if I was an end-user with minimal to average skill sets the package has a steep learning curve. If you do not understand enough to further research how to Create tables in a database, specifically, MySQL, then you will need to learn from Joomla tables as you can create simple, database-driven applications from them.

If you want to create powerful applications with this extension, the following minimums are essential:

1. Create tables in a MySQL database, using the Joomla database is okay and the Joomla tables may be used to enhance your application.
2. Be familiar with the basics of creating and using Cascading Style Sheets(CSS).
3. Understand basic concepts of HTML.
3. Know the basics of JavaScript to customize event handling.
4. Be familiar with the rudiments of the Document Object Model.


I would say this is not eyond the scope of a super-user. Developer skills are needed to use some of the advanced concepts such as using CURL and PHP, etc.

In short, a truly amazing extension that answers my issue of needing tools like this, with my arsenal of tools to enhance it, to cut down my application development time to weeks instead of months, using traditional methods, without the Joomla framework.

KUDOS to Rob Clayburn and anyone else on the Project Team that may have been involved.

I went through the trouble of installing this component, only to have issues with the adding form elements. So, I went to the fabrik support forum, which only allows download of 'fixes' if you pay to register. No Thanks. Bad business on the part of Fabrik developers; if you're going to offer a free component, you cannot expect to be paid for support unless it's extraneous, and fixes for bugs is not something I would consider to be worthy of charge.

I've installed FacileForms, and am very happy with the results. Not a fan of Fabrik, not at all.

paying 20 to get the bug fixes is a bit steep and out of character for a Joomla developer.
If the fix is available they need to publish it!

I have an undefined variable allElementData. Searched the fabrikar.com forum. Same type of problems turn up several times over several months but no answer or fix given.

I read the reviews and was concerned with the comments about documentation and felt this shold not be an issue as I really only had some simple stiff to do. On the face of it Fabrik did it well. Linked to other data sources and gave me the form I needed. Problem is it will not email and if I turn error log to on a vast swag of errors are displayed. I am using 1.0.12 Joomla and 1.3 of Fabrik, I would have assumed it would be stable and functional. the information offered for free was not helpful for these bugs. If paying the 20 pounds is to solve the bugs, then I prefer to use someting else. I do the website as a volunteer for a not for profit org and was disapointed with the product. Avoid the hassel.

I thought this was an excellent product but only once I work out how it all worked. It took ages to figure out how easy the product is to use even for a NEWBEE like me. Its only once you know these three things that you find out how easy the product is to use.
1) When you install the component when it asks you to continue STOP!!! there will be an option to install example data. DO IT. this will give you something to play around with
2) To see a published form you have to link to the table. to do this go to edit your table and in the 'link to menu' tab select a menu and then enter a menu name, click to link to menu. This will publish the item so you can see it in your preview.
3) In creating a new form you have to create your table using MySQL before you can attach your form to it.
The rest is really easy to figure out :O)

When they said it didn't require any knowledge of MySQL and it would all be in the familiar atmosphere of the Joomla backend, I figured, what the heck? As long as I didn't blow up my webhost's server, I desperately needed to set up a database for a genealogical society website. But that was easier said than done. Let me be honest here--I can't even SPELL SQL, let alone program in it...Excel causes me to break out in hives and we won't even go to the hysteria I've suffered from Access!

Installation was super easy. The set up of the forms stymied me at first--mainly because I was dealing with unfamiliar territory. Truly the first errors were mine and I couldn't find answers quickly on the Fabrik forum. I will admit that you have to really comb the forum, but even if you can't find them, you can find helpful users always willing to assist. (It also helps if you read Rob's READ ME FIRST in the forums--which I didn't...and after I had torn a headful of hair from my old gray head, I did go back and read it and found my answer). Duh.

But within three hours I had a BEAUTIFUL database and my users (who are all usually confounded by anything electronic) were happily inputting their data. I then went on to create another form by importing (using the nifty keen Import function within product) from Excel an ENORMOUS database. Once I had figured out that spaces in Excel headings are not happy things from the information in the forum, my data input to perfection with me having to change only a couple of things to get the form just the way I wanted. I didn't even have to mess with templates--they come with the product.

As for improvement: 1) On the extension: though you don't have to know MySQL or PHP functions, it really would help if the terms and functions were more fully explained; 2) a few more information buttons to help "on the fly" would also be great; 3) I really do think that there should be a Wiki page or PDF so that poor Rob won't have to be dealing with the likes of me asking questions he's already answered in his READ ME FIRST!

All in all though, this is a FANTASTIC product and when you're dealing with tons of information which needs to be organized, especially in a genealogical database, this product fits like a glove.