Allow View Only profile fields to be included in profile search forms

Currently, if a profile field is marked "View Only", you can not include it in a profile search form (i.e. you can't mark Is Searchable = true). We've modified the form interface in 3.0 so that this limitation is enforced via client side show / hide rules. However, there are definitely use cases where you'd want a View Only field to be searchable in a profile - so we should remove this limitation and allow search on View Only fields.

---- Original Post —
When creating a Search Profile (in ver. 3.0 Beta 2), on the CiviCRM Profile Field page there are checkboxes for "View Only" and "Searchable".

Even when "Searchable" is checked, if you also check "View Only" it inhibits the presentation of the search form. In this case you will see this at the top of your page

"No fields in this Profile have been configured as searchable"

when you do something like this (change the "mysite" part to test):

http://mysite/civicrm/profile?reset=1&force=1&gid=xx

where xx is the Profile ID

What you would expect to see instead is the search options control "New Search" at the top of the page, before the search results.

See Forum thread

http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,10078.0/topicseen.html

The field help for the "View Only" checkbox currently says

"If checked, users can view but not edit this field."

which doesn't clue you into the fact that checking the box kills the search participation.

So one of two things could be changed:

1. Change the field help to explain the interaction of the "View Only" and "Searchable" checkboxes.
2. Change the "View Only" checkbox functionality so it doesn't affect whether the field affects search.

Harry Levinson