[How To] Change a Custom Attribute to display a Text Area instead of a Text Line

Quote

What if you want to replace that text box that is displayed as a single line into a multi-line Text Area so the customer can input a story along with the items purchased?

Here is one way to do this.

First, this requires a little editing of the file that is in charge of displaying the Custom Attrtibutes on the Product Details page
...so back up your file by making a copy.

This How To was written to work with and tested on Joomla 1.0.7 and VirtueMart 1.0.2

ok, open the file: ps_product_attribute.php
location: <site_root>/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes/

find the function around line 349 called: list_custom_attribute()

find this line of code around 369:
Code:

$html .= "<input type=\"text\" class=\"inputbox\" id=\"".$titlevar."_field\" size=\"30\" name=\"$titlevar\" />";

with this one:
Code:

$html .= "<TEXTAREA rows=\"5\" cols=\"30\" id=\"".$titlevar."_field\" name=\"$titlevar\" /></textarea>";

Is it possible to do this on VM 1.13 and Joomla 1.5? The function list_custom_attribute is now on line 794, but the $html line is no longer there and I can't figure out how to go about it.

The function now looks like this:

   /**
    * Creates textfields for customizable products from the custom attribute format
    * @author Denie van Kleef (denievk@in2sports)
    * @param unknown_type $product_id
    * @return unknown
    */
   function list_custom_attribute( $product_id, $prod_id = null ) {
      global $mosConfig_secret ;
      $db = new ps_DB( ) ;
      $tpl = new $GLOBALS['VM_THEMECLASS']( ) ;
      if( $product_id == 0 )
         $product_id = $prod_id ;

      $q = "SELECT product_id, custom_attribute from #__{vm}_product WHERE product_id='$product_id'" ;
      $db->query( $q ) ;
      $db->next_record() ;

      $custom_attr_list = $db->f( "custom_attribute" ) ;
      if( $custom_attr_list ) {
         $has_custom_attributes = 1 ;
         $fields = explode( ";", $custom_attr_list ) ;
         $html = "" ;
         $prod_index = $product_id ;
         if( $prod_id ) {
            $prod_index = $prod_id ;
         }
         $attributes = array( ) ;
         $i = 0 ;
         foreach( $fields as $field ) {
            $titlevar = str_replace( " ", "_", $field ) ;
            $title = ucfirst( $field ) ;
            $attributes[$i]['product_id'] = $prod_index ;
            $attributes[$i]['title'] = $title ;
            $attributes[$i]['titlevar'] = $titlevar ;
            $i ++ ;
         }
      }

      if( $custom_attr_list ) {
         $tpl->set( 'attributes', $attributes ) ;
         $tpl->set( 'mosConfig_secret', $mosConfig_secret ) ;
         return $tpl->fetch( 'product_details/includes/addtocart_custom_attribute.tpl.php' ) ;
      }
   }

Edit: I figured it out. The change is now made in product_details/includes/addtocart_custom_attribute.tpl.php.

Thanks very much,
Phil