Save and user submitted data from a form and display them in the wp backend

Question

My question is very simple but the answer I'm not sure if will be that simple. I'm developing a website for a non-profit organization where people can fill out a form containing questions usually asked by a doctor. Once a user submits the form I would like to grab the answers and display them in the backend so that Doctors(with Editor role) can see them and if approved can send an email with a solution.

To be more specific, there can be more than 1 users submitting the form and I want all of the users form entries displayed in a new section in the admin panel as posts or something. So, if 10 people seeks help by submitting the form will have 10 form entries available in the admin section for Doctors to view.

Do I need a custom DB table to store the form data? If so, how may I go about grabbing and storing them in the database?

How can I add a new section in the admin panel something like Patients where all the form entries by users will be displayed for the Doctors to view? I know how develop custom_post_type, custom_taxonomy and custom_meta_boxes but I don't think they are appropriate in this case.

I hope I was able to explain the scenario clearly. I hope someone can come up with a solution and this might help other people as well.

Answer 1

Can you just tell me how I can grab the input value for "name" and add the entry to custom_post_type?

Sure thing:

if ( isset( $_POST['name'] ) ) {
    $name = sanitize_text_field( wp_unslash( $_POST['name'] ) );
    if ( $name ) {
        wp_insert_post(
            array(
                'post_title'  => $name,
                'post_type'   => 'my_post_type',
                'post_status' => 'publish', /* Or "draft", if required */
            )       
        );
    }
}