Any best practices/tips for creating a query view against contacts to used with webforms?

Question

I've created a view to query up existing contact and I was able to create a link to a webform with a specific id.

I added a combined filter for first name, last name and email. Before it filters you get everyone in the db. What's the best way to not get anyone until you hit search? (I found that making the search box mandatory did that, but is that a good way?)

I don't suppose there's an easy way to get the nice autocomplete box that you get for webforms existing contact is there?

Any gotchas I should watch out for?

Answer 1

Note this is purely a Drupal question at this point. Anyway, yes requiring the field can suffice. You can also use the Exposed Form to make a search block that has additional settings such as "Input required" (under the Advanced bit of Views on right)

Answer 2

As far as your exposed filter, I use Better Exposed Filters module that has an option "Require input before results are shown." We use that all of the time.

Great module that really lets you customize the exposed filters.

As for the Webform, you can set the contact to Autocomplete and filter by the appropriate group.

Update I think I misunderstood about your Webform reference.

If what you are trying to accomplish is an exposed filter that autocopmletes names for View search results, use the Better Exposed Filters module, select "Autosubmit" and "Require input before results are shown." After that, in the advanced section of the View turn on Ajax. That should essentially give you an autocomplete list of contacts.

Also instead of the first and last name fields, I would remove those and use either the display name or sort name fields depending on how you want users to enter names.