Kentico 12 MVC - Add a Forms selector inside a widget - kentico

Question

How do I add a Forms widget inside another widget? I tried using FormZone() within the widget but nothing shows up.

Answer 1

It is not possible to render a Forms widget inside another widget in Kentico 12 MVC.
You will need to upgrade to Kentico Xperience 13 for this functionality - see https://docs.xperience.io/developing-websites/page-builder-development/rendering-widgets-in-code#Renderingwidgetsincode-Renderingwidgets

Answer 2

Technically, you can render a Form inside a Widget in Kentico 12, however it is not officially supported and requires a bit of custom development.
The key is to use IFormProvider and IFormComponentVisibilityEvaluator to get all the Form info so that you can render it manually (in a Controller):
var formInfo = BizFormInfoProvider
.GetBizFormInfo(formName, SiteContext.CurrentSiteName);
string className = DataClassInfoProvider
.GetClassName(formInfo.FormClassID);
var existingBizFormItem = className is null
? null
: BizFormItemProvider
.GetItems(className)?.GetExistingItemForContact(
formInfo, contactContext.ContactGuid);
var formComponents = formProvider
.GetFormComponents(formInfo)
.GetDisplayedComponents(
ContactManagementContext.CurrentContact,
formInfo, existingBizFormItem, visibilityEvaluator);
var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings
{
ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver(),
TypeNameHandling = TypeNameHandling.Auto,
StringEscapeHandling = StringEscapeHandling.EscapeHtml
};
var formConfiguration = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<FormBuilderConfiguration>(
formInfo.FormBuilderLayout, settings);
var prefix = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
ViewData.TemplateInfo.HtmlFieldPrefix = prefix;
return new FormWidgetViewModel
{
DisplayValidationErrors = true,
FormComponents = formComponents.ToList(),
FormConfiguration = formConfiguration,
FormName = formName,
FormPrefix = prefix,
IsFormSubmittable = true,
SiteForms = new List<SelectListItem>(),
SubmitButtonImage = formInfo.FormSubmitButtonImage,
SubmitButtonText = string.IsNullOrEmpty(formInfo.FormSubmitButtonText)
? ResHelper.GetString("general.submit")
: ResHelper.LocalizeString(formInfo.FormSubmitButtonText)
};
Then you would render the Form Model as an HTML Form using Kentico's Form rendering APIs:
<!-- ~/Views/Form/Form.cshtml -->
#using Kentico.Forms.Web.Mvc;
#using Kentico.Forms.Web.Mvc.Widgets;
#using Kentico.Forms.Web.Mvc.Widgets.Internal
#model FormWidgetViewModel
#{
var config = FormWidgetRenderingConfiguration.Default;
// #Html.Kentico().FormSubmitButton(Model) requires
// this ViewData value to be populated. Normally it
// executes as part of the Widget rendering, but since
// we aren't rendering a Widget, we have to do it manually
ViewData.AddFormWidgetRenderingConfiguration(config);
}
#using (Html.Kentico().BeginForm(Model))
{
#Html.Kentico().FormFields(Model)
#Html.Kentico().FormSubmitButton(Model)
}
You can read about the full configuration and setup in my blog post Kentico EMS: MVC Widget Experiments Part 3 - Rendering Form Builder Forms Without Widgets