Advanced Features

Launching Forms by URL

You can launch a form directly by URL by using the following convention:

http://yourhostname/yourvivaldidirectory/index.php?route=ogs/dynamicform.php?formkey={yourformguid}

Where the items in bold will depend on your Vivaldi deployment.  The yourformguid value will be the formguid of the form you want to launch.  You can find that information by either (a) launching the form, or (b) from the Forms>Manage Forms>Form Designer in the "Form Properties" panel.

Developer Tools

Vivaldi takes advantage of my libraries that are available for your own use and refence as well.  The master page makes the following available:


URL Parameters

  • rowlimit - For tablular forms you can limit the number of rows to return at runtime.
  • altkey - You can pass a column name that you want to limit values by.  Encode the value if it has spaces.
  • altkeyvalue - In combination with the altkey parameter, you can pass in a value you want to filter rows by.

On This Page

    Form SQL

    When you design a form, you have the option to specify the Form SQL that will be used to fetch records.  In that field, you can use the most basic, which is a select all rows from your base table (Vivaldi automatically populates that for you when you specify your Base Table), or add your own criteria.  That criteria might point to a MySQL View, or include SQL for that form only.  Vivaldi also supports runtime determination of the username by adding the following keyword to your SQL: [username]. For example, if you want the user to only see their own records in a given table, you can set your Form SQL to something like the following: 

    SELECT * FROM mytable where username='[username]' 


    User Notifications and Alerts

    You can create notifications for your end users to see in the upper right-hand corner of the menu bar via several methods:
    • Write records to the table ogs_notifications.  The user id (fk_userid) and subject are the only required items.
    • Use the delivered javascript function createnotification(fk_userid, messagebody, notificationtype, messagefrom, messagesubject).
    • Use the delivered php function fCreateNotification($fk_userid, $messagebody, $notificationtype, $messagefrom, $messagesubject)

    User Mass Creation

    Vivaldi can help you mass create new users based on data from one of your tables.

    1. Open the file ogs/umc.php
    2. Change the line if ($_GET['authtoken'] != '******') { with your own unique string (for security, to prevent someone that reads this page from trying to mass create users on your server).
    3. Open the file ogs/umc.php in your browser with the following URL parameters
      • authtoken - The authorization token you created in the first step.
      • sourcetable - The name of the MySQL table/view that contains your user information.
      • col_email - The column in the MySQL table that contains the user email addresses.
      • col_username - The column in the MySQL table that contains the unique user names. This can be the same as the email address if desired.
      • col_customid - Optional. The column in the MySQL table that contains the custom_id value you want to associate with the user's record.
      • roleassignment - The role identifier from ogs_role (roleid) that you want to assign the users.
      • nonotifications - (optional) Set to '1' to send email notifications to users
    4. The new users' passwords will be 'tmp_username' and they will be asked to change their password after they login.
    For example, ogs/umc.php?authtoken=1234&sourcetable=myusers&col_email=useremail&col_username=username&roleassignment=99

    Audit History Wizard

    The Audit History Wizard automatically creates a new audit history table (yourtablename_audit) for your selected base table, as well as MySQL triggers to automatically write any inserts/changes/delete history to the audit history table. You can access it via: index.php?route=ogs/auditsetup.php. If you are upgrading from Vivaldi 3.3 or lower, you will also need to add a Custom Form Permission row (Security>>Custom Form Permissions) for your administrator user account with the Custom Form name 'auditsetup'.

    Custom HTML Head and Foot

    You can edit the files customer_htmlhead.php and customer_htmlfooter.php to add your own PHP or html to every page in Vivaldi. These files are no overwritten when upgrading to a new version, and can be very useful for things like web usage tracking/analytics code, or other elements. Note that these pages are loaded on the index.php page, not inside each form loaded within index.php, so the PHP and HTML will be loaded only when a full page load/refresh occurs.

    Custom Translations

    If you wish to provide a new language in your application, or adjust the existing translation strings, edit the file "js/translation_customer.js". Use the example convention for any new translation strings:
    "String you want to translate" : {
    es : "Spanish Translation",
    fr : "French Translation"
    }

    You can add new translation languages by following these steps:
    1. Add the language to the ogs_language table, with the language column using the ISO 639-1 code, and the languagename column containing the display name of the language.
    2. Add the new translation strings to translation_customer.js. For simplicity, you may want to copy the existing strings from translation_strings.js since it contains all the strings present in Vivaldi's admin screens.