In some sites more than others, I will find myself spending more time in the database or SQL side of the site as this makes for an incredibly efficient method to updating, restoring, or fixing data as opposed to using the WordPress admin interface. Sometimes you, too, may be forced to access the database directly, if you accidentally changed something like Home or Site URL (phpMyAdmin is awesome for this).

However, what if you have a client and they did not give you SQL access? What if your client does not have cPanel or phpMyAdmin? There are a variety of tools (i.e., WordPress plugins) available for you to do database stuff from WordPress (though not as fast per se).

Check out these plugins:

1. MyWebSql: Allows editing/managing the WordPress database directly from within the admin panel, just like phpMyAdmin. Note, this needs the bcmath PHP extension as well as gmp & openssl extensions. If you don't have these extensions, try changing SECURE_LOGIN to false as directed here.
   
2. Adminer ([plugin_info slug="adminer" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="adminer" data="short_description"] (Thanks Jason!)
   
3. Search and Replace ([plugin_info slug="search-and-replace" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="search-and-replace" data="short_description"]
   
4. Search Regex ([plugin_info slug="search-regex" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="search-regex" data="short_description"]ort.
   
5. SQL Executioner ([plugin_info slug="sql-executioner" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="sql-executioner" data="short_description"]
   
6. Edit Any Table ([plugin_info slug="edit-any-table" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="edit-any-table" data="short_description"]
   
7. WP Clean Up ([plugin_info slug="wp-clean-up" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="wp-clean-up" data="short_description"]
   
8. ELI's SQL Admin Reports Shortcode and DB Backup ([plugin_info slug="elisqlreports" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="elisqlreports" data="short_description"]
   
9. Safe Search and Replace ([plugin_info slug="safe-search-replace" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="safe-search-replace" data="short_description"]
   
10. Find replace ([plugin_info slug="find-replace" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="find-replace" data="short_description"]
    

Other Plugins include:

• dbview ([plugin_info slug="dbview" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="dbview" data="short_description"]
  
• WP MySQL Console (hasn't been updated in over 2 years) ([plugin_info slug="wp=mysql-console" data="downloaded"]): [plugin_info slug="wp-mysql-console" data="short_description"]
  

Since Soliloquy does not "properly" enqueue the flexslider stylesheet (only meaning, it doesn't hook into wp_enqueue_scripts, and frankly, it does it with the best approach IMHO). Here is the proper hook to remove the default Soliloquy style sheet.

So recently someone asked me, "Can Gravity Forms pre-populate a dropdown [radio or select] with information based on a previous input in a multipage form?" While the options are plenty to make this happen with the very many Gravity Form hooks. Some include the following (but not limited to):

• Set a cookie & retrieve the cookie for use later using setcookie() & $_COOKIE.
• Use jQuery (and/or AJAX) to populate fields

While both of these are extremely viable options, what this person wanted was to search a custom post type for someone's name. So on page 1 of the form was an input for the person's name.

While logically, one would think that the gform_field_value_$parameter_name filter would work, I couldn't for the life of me determine how to do this for select and/or radio fields. So, I switched back to gform_pre_render hook. As you may or may not know gform_pre_render hook gives you the $form object to manipulate prior to rendering the form and executed before the form is displayed, which is what I needed.

Setup

In order to set this up, you will need two things:

1. A custom post type called 'Persons' (wps_person), which served as the body of data that would pre-populate the radios.
2. A simple Multipaged form

Gravity Forms Multi-paged Form

So create a new gravity form. Add a name (Field ID:1), then add a radio field. In the name field select either Normal (this is what the example uses) or Simple (example has a commented out replacement for this). Have the name on page 1 and the radio options on page 2. In the radio field, do the following under the Advanced Tab:

• Add a CSS class name 'person'
• Check "Allow field to be populated dynamically" but no need to choose a parameter name

Now you are ready...

Gravity Forms Customization

First, we have to cycle through the form fields. Gravity Forms does not prepped the Form Object (here $form) where the key is the Field ID (though that would be nice).

Next, in this snippet, you will notice a check at the beginning to see if we are on the correct field. You may think I go overboard, but I don't want to edit the wrong field. So I am checking for the following:

• Field Type
• CSS class
• Allows pre-population

[php]
if ( 'radio' != $field['type'] || false === strpos( $field['cssClass'], 'candle-person' ) || ! rgar( $field, 'allowsPrepopulate' ) )
[/php]

While you don't necessarily need all three per se, I find that I don't run into errors when I do all three.

Third, we do a new WP_Query() (see codex for more information & see Mark Luetke's (Github, Site) WP_Query Args Gist) searching for those items that match the name. Here I access the $_POST var with the appropriate input_*_* name. I then also tell it to query my post type ('wps_person'). For future possibilities, I add another query var 'gform_search', just in case I want to do something with pre_get_posts later, but that's for more advanced usage.

Then, I just cycle through the available posts to create my choices, and return the form.

Here's an example: