The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

Truly Fabrik has given me wings!
Excellent support, and a great team. With this extension, my dreams have become bigger, since I can realize them!!!

Really easy to use, very powerful and very versatile!

You can use it for form, report tool and also you can create a custom application using Fabrik.

Fabrik is a lot more easier than other similar component (DBQ,Reporter,FacileForm ect.).

I have subscribe to their plan and got good documentation and their forum is very active.

It is a great tool which you can use for building all you need for creating and managing website applications. I have used it for creating an exam sessions booking system. Without using this component I don't know how I would have been able. All I had to do is just to set few table, with 3 words of php.

The effort and time cost have been decreased incredibly, although it was the first time I have used this component.

as time goes I was thinking that with this tool it is possible to create anything.

I'm waiting for the stable 2.0 version for using with Joomla 1.5

Once the workflow via the admin interface is figured out it is really up to your imagination, use of CSS, and coding skills to take it to the next level.

We have wanted to take Joomla to the next level for our customers data entry and reporting needs and we feel that a HOME RUN was hit by selecting Fabrik.

Documentation is always interesting suject, been there done that before and it is not easy to do. The subscription is worth the few bucks to get the documentation. With in an hour of printing and reading the docs we had the workflow figured out and were up and running with real data.

If you are not familiar with SVN to get updates/patches take the time to figure it out it is well worth the time and effort and might save you time.

If anyone run into the Calendar script error, no problem it is on the forum with an easy fix.

Looking forward to working with Fabrik on our current project and expect to use it on future projects.

Great Job!!

OTG Group

Honestly speaking, no matter how fantastic this product is, how can first-time users get value out of it, if they don't have a clue how to use the extension. Yes, agreed, great features, but of what use if there are no idea on using it???

The developers are charging for documentation and tutorial but the product is "free" to download. Well, great way to attract people to download the extension and then get stuck with using it unless they subscribe and pay the $45/yr membership fee.

It took me 30 minutes to create a form, use it, save the data in the database and to show the resulting tables. I did not need to read the documentation. I am not an IT expert.
Ok, it is not the user friendliest tool but after reading the reviews here I thought I might need some days to figure out how it worked. That is not the case.
And the tool seems to have a lot of potential.
Only the french translation in the back-end is somehow approximative, but not worse than my english ;-)
Thanks to Fabrikar for this component.

No words to describe Fabrik. In each version that comes out, Fabrik is better.

Another thing that is very good is the Fabrik support. I have found many dificults but in Fabrik support they give me all the help to solve the problems.

Thanks for all :)

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...