Formulate Overview

A form builder for Umbraco. More info here: www.formulate.rocks

Contributors

These are some of the people who have made Formulate possible:

• Nicholas Westby - Rhythm Agency - nicholaswestby.com
• Josef Kohout - Rhythm Agency - rhythmagency.com

Contributing

Requires:

• Visual Studio 2017
• Node.js
• npm
• grunt-cli (installed globally)

Building

To build the source code, you can use the simple building technique or the advanced building technique. Both versions are described below.

Simple Building Technique

Double click the file "build/build.bat". The Umbraco package will be created in the "dist" folder. You can then install this Umbraco package into your website.

If you would like to use the built-in sample website, refer to the advanced building technique below.

Advanced Building Technique

These are the steps you can take to build and test Formulate:

• Build the solution.
• Run npm install (this only needs to be done once).
• Run npm i grunt-cli -g (this only needs to be done once).
• Run grunt.
  • Pro-tip: Running grunt frontend is faster
• Run the sample website.
• Run grunt package to create an Umbraco installer package (in the "dist" folder).

There are a few nuances to building you may want to consider:

• Most grunt tasks will use whichever build configuration is most recent, but will otherwise default to "Release".
• The grunt package-full task always defaults to "Release".
• You can specify a particular build configuration like this: grunt package-full --buildConfiguration=Debug.

Assemblies / Projects / Folders

Each project is built into an assembly, and each assembly has a different purpose. Here is a description of each project's purpose:

• formulate.api: This contains the easy to use functionality that a developer rendering Formulate forms will need.
• formulate.app: This is the main core of Formulate. It contains all of the functionality necessary for the back office to work.
• formulate.core: This contains some basic functionality shared by all of the assemblies.
• formulate.meta: This contains information about Formulate (e.g., version number). Used primarily during the build process.
• formulate.deploy: This project contains the functionality necessary for Formulate to extend Umbraco Deploy.
• Website: This is a sample website for developers who wish to contribute to the Formulate codebase. The binary is not part of the packaged releases, though a few of the files it contains are (e.g., some CSHTML, config, and XDT files).

There a few a few other folders as well:

• formulate.backoffice.ui This contains the styles for the Formulate components in the Umbraco back office.
• formulate.frontend This contains the frontend code for Formulate (e.g., the JavaScript to render the forms on your website).

Maintainers

To create a new release to NuGet, see the NuGet documentation. Releases should also be made to Our and to GitHub.

Thanks

Thanks to the creators of the following Umbraco packages, which served as excellent points of reference while building Formulate:

• Archetype
• Umbraco Bookshelf
• Form Editor
• Merchello