Reading data from sitecore webforms for marketeers database

Question

I want to build a custom interface (a separate aspx page) to manage the data that is put into the webforms for marketeers (WFFM) database, and that for just one form. It must be possible to edit the data and select records with particular sortings and pagings. The database is configured to be SQLite.

Is this possible and recommended, or is it just plain xml that is saved into the WFFM database? And how should I go about it?

Answer 1

This is completely doable, though the select query to get data out of WFFM is a bit funky because everything is stored loose in one huge table called "field" with only a trail of GUIDs to tie the stored values back to what form they came from and what field.

Provided below is part of an Export to Excel utility I wrote for WFFM data. It builds a DataTable object from submitted form results. You could adapt it to some other structure without much work though.

public string connectionStringWFFM = "user id=sitecore_admin;password=xxx;Data Source=SitecoreDBServer.com;Database=Sitecore_WebForms";

protected DataTable BuildDataTable(Item formItem)
{
    List<FormResult> formResults = FormResults(formItem.ID.Guid);
    List<Field> distinctFields = DistinctFields(formItem.ID.Guid);

    var dt = new DataTable();
    dt.Columns.Add("Submission_DateTime", typeof (string));
    foreach (Field field in distinctFields)
    {
        var dataColumn = new DataColumn("_" + field.id.ToString("N"), typeof (string));
        dataColumn.Caption = field.name.Replace(" ", "_");
        dt.Columns.Add(dataColumn);
    }

    foreach (FormResult formResult in formResults)
    {
        var connection = new SqlConnection();
        connection.ConnectionString = connectionStringWFFM;
        var command = new SqlCommand();
        command.Connection = connection;
        command.CommandText = "select fieldid, value from field where formid=@formid order by fieldid";
        command.Parameters.Add("@formid", SqlDbType.UniqueIdentifier).Value = formResult.id;
        connection.Open();
        SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();

        DataRow dataRow = dt.NewRow();
        dataRow["Submission_DateTime"] = formResult.timestamp.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss");
        while (reader.Read())
        {
            dataRow["_" + reader.GetGuid(0).ToString("N")] = reader.GetValue(1).ToString().Replace("<item>", "").Replace("</item>", "");
        }
        dt.Rows.Add(dataRow);

        reader.Close();
        connection.Close();
    }

    return dt;
}

public List<Field> DistinctFields(Guid formitemid)
{
    var connection = new SqlConnection();
    connection.ConnectionString = connectionStringWFFM;
    var command = new SqlCommand();
    command.Connection = connection;
    command.CommandText = "select distinct fieldid from field where formid in (select id from form where formitemid=@formitemid) order by fieldid";
    command.Parameters.Add("@formitemid", SqlDbType.UniqueIdentifier).Value = formitemid;
    connection.Open();
    SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();

    var results = new List<Field>();
    int count = 0;
    while (reader.Read())
    {
        var field = new Field();
        field.id = reader.GetGuid(0);
        Database database = Factory.GetDatabase("master");
        Item i = database.GetItem(new ID(field.id));
        if (i != null && i.DisplayName != null)
        {
            field.name = i.DisplayName;
        }
        else
        {
            field.name = "Field" + count;
        }
        results.Add(field);
        count += 1;
    }

    reader.Close();
    connection.Close();

    return results;
}

public List<FormResult> FormResults(Guid formitemid)
{
    var connection = new SqlConnection();
    connection.ConnectionString = connectionStringWFFM;
    var command = new SqlCommand();
    command.Connection = connection;
    command.CommandText = "select id, timestamp from form where formitemid=@formitemid";
    command.Parameters.Add("@formitemid", SqlDbType.UniqueIdentifier).Value = formitemid;
    connection.Open();
    SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();

    var results = new List<FormResult>();

    while (reader.Read())
    {
        var result = new FormResult();
        result.id = reader.GetGuid(0);
        result.timestamp = reader.GetDateTime(1);
        results.Add(result);
    }

    reader.Close();
    connection.Close();

    return results;
}

public class FormResult
{
    public Guid id { get; set; }
    public DateTime timestamp { get; set; }
}

public class Field
{
    public Guid id { get; set; }
    public string name { get; set; }
}