WPCF7
WordPress Contact Form 7 is a mainstay of every WordPress developer I know. It’s great for so many reasons. You don’t have to build forms manually, you don’t have to worry about validation, it works with other plugins like Contact Form DB. It’s just great.
Pipes
One feature available in WPCF7 that I use frequently is selectable recipients with pipes. It allows you to provide a drop-down menu of recipients without exposing their email addresses in your UI. As the documentation states, the standard markup would be:
[select your-recipient "ceo@example.com"
"sales@example.com"
"support@example.com"]
Which outputs (sans wpcf7 classes):
<select>
<option value="ceo@example.com">ceo@example.com</option>
<option value="sales@example.com">sales@example.com</option>
<option value="support@example.com">support@example.com</option>
</select>
With pipes, the syntax changes to this:
[select your-recipient "CEO|ceo@example.com"
"Sales|sales@example.com"
"Support|support@example.com"]
Which outputs (sans wpcf7 classes):
<select>
<option value="CEO">CEO</option>
<option value="Sales">Sales</option>
<option value="Support">Support</option>
</select>
So, by putting a “dummy” value in your select choices, you are protecting potentially sensitive data, in this case email addresses.
The Problem
The problem with this, though, is that it isn’t manipulatable on the back-end. At one point, this seems to have not been the case, as explored here. It seems that, back in 2012, pipes could be added by pushing them onto the end of the WPCF7_Pipes->pipes property. That property is now private. At this point, though, if you add "CEO|ceo@example.com" to the option list programmatically, it will be output exactly like that ("CEO|ceo@example.com"), rather than being processed as a WPCF7_Pipe.
add_filter
Even though we can’t add WPCF7_Pipe objects directly to the WPCF7_Pipes object, we can get all of the old values and reconstruct the WPCF7_Pipes object with the old WPCF7_Pipe objects’ values and the new values we wish to insert.
Here we get the old values and store them in an array for later:
<?php
// get the existing WPCF7_Pipe objects
$befores = $tag['pipes']->collect_befores();
$afters = $tag['pipes']->collect_afters();
// add the existing WPCF7_Pipe objects to the new pipes array
$pipes_new = array();
for ($i=0; $i < count($befores); $i++) {
$pipes_new[] = $befores[$i] . '|' . $afters[$i];
}
?>
Here we add some new WPCF7_Pipe object values:
<?php
$pipes_new[] = $user->display_name . '|' . $user->user_email;
?>
Here we constuct a new WPCF7_Pipes object and add it to the $tags array to return to the form builder:
<?php
$tag['pipes'] = new WPCF7_Pipes($pipes_new);
?>
And here is a complete filter to be placed in functions.php which adds existing WordPress users to a dropdown:
<?php
function dynamic_select_list($tag, $unused) {
$options = (array)$tag['options'];
foreach ($options as $option) {
if (preg_match('%^from_db:([-0-9a-zA-Z_]+)$%', $option, $matches)) {
$from_db = $matches[1];
}
}
if(!isset($from_db)) {
return $tag;
}
// get the existing WPCF7_Pipe objects
$befores = $tag['pipes']->collect_befores();
$afters = $tag['pipes']->collect_afters();
// add the existing WPCF7_Pipe objects to the new pipes array
$pipes_new = array();
for ($i=0; $i < count($befores); $i++) {
$pipes_new[] = $befores[$i] . '|' . $afters[$i];
}
// Add users to the $tag values
if($from_db === 'users') {
$blogusers = get_users(
array(
'blog_id' => 1,
'exclude' => array(1,2,4,7,342),
'fields' => 'all_with_meta',
'orderby' => 'display_name',
)
);
usort($blogusers, create_function('$a, $b', 'if($a->last_name == $b->last_name) { return 0;} return ($a->last_name > $b->last_name) ? 1 : -1;'));
if (!$blogusers) {
return $tag;
}
foreach ($blogusers as $user) {
$tag['raw_values'][] = $user->display_name;
$tag['values'][] = $user->display_name;
$tag['labels'][] = ucwords(strtolower($user->display_name));
// add the user info for use as a new WPCF7_Pipe object
$pipes_new[] = $user->display_name . '|' . $user->user_email;
}
}
// setup all the WPCF7_Pipe objects
$tag['pipes'] = new WPCF7_Pipes($pipes_new);
return $tag;
}
add_filter('wpcf7_form_tag', 'dynamic_select_list', 10, 2);
?>
This gives us this new shortcode syntax, which will append the additional supplied data to whatever is retrieved in dynamic_select_list(), which is triggered by adding from_db:users:
[select* your-recipient from_db:users "CEO|ceo@example.com"
"Sales|sales@example.com"
"Support|support@example.com"]
The value of [your-recipient] will be the email address on the right side of the pipe, but the dummy value can be accessed as [_raw_your-recipient] if necessary.