what does Validator::make($request->all() do in Laravel 5.2? - forms

Laravel newbie here.
I am trying to understand the following snippet, and it's not clearly explained on the Laravel docs. I thought maybe other newbies might also find it helpful if it were explained in plain words. From what I understand, the routes file contains this route for new task creation, and so the validator makes a check on all the fields of the incoming Request object, checking along the way if the name field equals 255 chars? Is that correct? Why do we have a $request->all() bit in there?
Route::post('/task', function (Request $request) {
$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
'name' => 'required|max:255',
]);

The method Validator::make() takes two arguments: one array of inputs to check, and one array of rules to check against.
If you have a posted form from a webpage, you can retrieve the form data (and/or GET variables) from the $request object. If you want all of them, you simply call $request->all().
So what you're saying in the code is basically "I want to create a new validator. I supply it with the posted form data, and I want to check that form data against these rules. There's only one rule, which says to make sure the name field was supplied, and that it isn't longer than 255 characters."
Hope that makes sense.

Related

Which is correct $form_state['values'] or $form_state['input']?

I used ajax to populate dependent fields and rebuild the field structure but in this whole process $form_state['values'] get erased but $form_state['input'] keeps the values through out the process and functionality works properly using $form_state['input'].
I am working on contribute module and while doing review using pareview.sh it suggest me to use $form_state['values'] instead of $form_state['input']. But in most of the scenarios I didn't get required values in $form_state['values'].
Please suggest me what should I do to resolved those warnings in pareview.sh?
As far as I know, all the values get submitted by the form are stored inside $form_state['values'] array.
Try using var_dump($form_state['values']); to get an idea of what fields are getting submitted.
You can check here for more informations about form state keys -> https://www.drupal.org/node/1850410
To keep simple
$form_state['values'] // POST sanitized data
$form_state['input'] // POST raw data
There is a discussion here : https://www.drupal.org/node/1250172
Do you implement your ajax call with form api ?

Same form to includ new client and edit existing client. How to use "set value"?

I'm using same form to new client and edit client in Code Igniter. Sometimes I'll include new client so the field must be empty. However, sometimes I'll edit a client and I must put respect value to a field.
For example:
echo form_input('client_name', $client_to_edit['client_name']);
How can I use "set_values()" and $client_to_edit['client_name'] to pass data to the field?
set_value() is really only needed for form_validation and in this case you'll probably need that too. Basically you need to determine if the form is editing or for a new client, if editing it needs to run a query on the database to return that users data and pass it to a variable.
echo form_input('client_name',set_value
('client_name',($user['client_name'] ? $user['client_name']:'')));
Basically what's happening is if the form is editing you're populating the $user variable in the controller with that users data. The set value statement has 3 options. First if the form is returning from form_validation it sets it to whatever was entered when the form was posted, if there is no post data it then looks to see if $user['client_name'] exists, if it does it uses that, if it doesn't it just returns blank.

HTML form POST method with querystring in action URL

Lets say I have a form with method=POST on my page.
Now this form has some basic form elements like textbox, checkbox, etc
It has action URL as http://example.com/someAction.do?param=value
I do understand that this is actually a contradictory thing to do, but my question is will it work in practice.
So my questions are;
Since the form method is POST and I have a querystring as well in my URL (?param=value)
Will it work correctly? i.e. will I be able to retrieve param=value on my receiving page (someAction.do)
Lets say I use Java/JSP to access the values on server side. So what is the way to get the values on server side ? Is the syntax same to access value of param=value as well as for the form elements like textbox/radio button/checkbox, etc ?
1) YES, you will have access to POST and GET variables since your request will contain both. So you can use $_GET["param_name"] and $_POST["param_name"] accordingly.
2) Using JSP you can use the following code for both:
<%= request.getParameter("param_name") %>
If you're using EL (JSP Expression Language), you can also get them in the following way:
${param.param_name}
EDIT: if the param_name is present in both the request QueryString and POST data, both of them will be returned as an array of values, the first one being the QueryString.
In such scenarios, getParameter("param_name) would return the first one of them (as explained here), however both of them can be read using the getParameterValues("param_name") method in the following way:
String[] values = request.getParameterValues("param_name");
For further info, read here.
Yes. You can retrieve these parameters in your action class.
Just you have to make property of same name (param in your case) with there getters and setters.
Sample Code
private String param;
{... getters and setters ...}
when you will do this, the parameters value (passed via URL) will get saved into the getters of that particular property. and through this, you can do whatever you want with that value.
The POST method just hide the submitted form data from the user. He/she can't see what data has been sent to the server, unless a special tool is used.
The GET method allows anybody to see what data it has. You can easily see the data from the URL (ex. By seeing the key-value pairs in the query string).
In other words it is up to you to show the (maybe unimportant) data to the user by using query string in the form action. For example in a data table filter. To keep the current pagination state, you can use domain.com/path.do?page=3 as an action. And you can hide the other data within the form components, like input, textarea, etc.
Both methods can be catched in the server with the same way. For example in Java, by using request.getParameter("page").

How can I check my post data in Zend?

I am a beginner and I am creating some forms to be posted into MySQL using Zend, and I am in the process of debugging but I don't really know how to debug anything using Zend. I want to submit the form and see if my custom forms are concatenating the data properly before it goes into MySQL, so I want to catch the post data to see a few things. How can I do this?
The Default route for zend framework application looks like the following
http://www.name.tld/$controller/$action/$param1/$value1/.../$paramX/$valueX
So all $_GET-Parameters simply get contenated onto the url in the above manner /param/value
Let's say you are within IndexController and indexAction() in here you call a form. Now there's possible two things happening:
You do not define a Form-Action, then you will send the form back to IndexController:indexAction()
You define a Form action via $form->setAction('/index/process') in that case you would end up at IndexController:processAction()
The way to access the Params is already defined above. Whereas $this->_getParam() equals $this->getRequest()->getParam() and $this->_getAllParams() equals $this->getRequest->getParams()
The right way yo check data of Zend Stuff is using Zend_Debug as #vascowhite has pointed out. If you want to see the final Query-String (in case you're manually building queries), then you can simply put in the insert variable into Zend_Debug::dump()
you can use $this->_getAllParams();.
For example: var_dump($this->_getAllParams()); die; will output all the parameters ZF received and halt the execution of the script. To be used in your receiving Action.
Also, $this->_getParam("param name"); will get a specific parameter from the request.
The easiest way to check variables in Zend Framework is to use Zend_Debug::dump($variable); so you can do this:-
Zend_Debug::dump($_POST);
Zend framework is built on the top of the PHP . so you can use var_dump($_POST) to check the post variables.
ZF has provided its own functions to get all the post variables.. Zend_Debug::dump($this->getRequest()->getPost())
or specifically for one variable.. you can use Zend_Debug::dump($this->getRequest()->getPost($key))
You can check post data by using zend
$request->isPost()
and for retrieving post data
$request->getPost()
For example
if ($request->isPost()) {
$postData = $request->getPost();
Zend_Debug::dump($postData );
}

zend framework urls and get method

I am developing a website using zend framework.
i have a search form with get method. when the user clicks submit button the query string appears in the url after ? mark. but i want it to be zend like url.
is it possible?
As well as the JS approach you can do a redirect back to the preferred URL you want. I.e. let the form submit via GET, then redirect to the ZF routing style.
This is, however, overkill unless you have a really good reason to want to create neat URLs for your search queries. Generally speaking a search form should send a GET query that can be bookmarked. And there's nothing wrong with ?param=val style parameters in a URL :-)
ZF URLs are a little odd in that they force URL parameters to be part of the main URL. I.e. domain.com/controller/action/param/val/param2/val rather than domain.com/controller/action?param=val&param2=val
This isn't always what you want, but seems to be the way frameworks are going with URL parameters
There is no obvious solution. The form generated by zf will be a standard html one. When submitted from the browser using GET it will result in a request like
/action/specified/in/form?var1=val1&var2=var2
Only solution to get a "zendlike url" (one with / instead of ? or &), would be to hack the form submission using javascript. For example you can listen for onSubmit, abort the submission and instead redirect browser to a translated url. I personally don't believe this solution is worth the added complexity, but it should perform what you're looking for.
After raging against this for a day-and-a-half, and doing my best to figure out the right way to do this fairly simple this, I gave up and did the following. I still can't believe there's not a better way.
The use case that necessitates this is a simple record listing, with a form up top for adding some filters (via GET), maybe some column sorting, and Zend_Paginate thrown in for good measure. I ran into issues using the Url view helper in my pagination partial, but I suspect with even just sorting and a filter-form, Zend_View_Helper_Url would still fall down.
But I digress. My solution was to add a method to my base controller class that merges any raw query-string parameters with the existing zend-style slashy-params, and redirects (but only if necessary). The method can be called in any action that doesn't have to handle POSTs.
Hopefully someone will find this useful. Or even better, find a better way:
/**
* Translate standard URL parameters (?foo=bar&baz=bork) to zend-style
* param (foo/bar/baz/bork). Query-string style
* values override existing route-params.
*/
public function mergeQueryString(){
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()){
throw new Exception("mergeQueryString only works on GET requests.");
}
$q = $this->getRequest()->getQuery();
$p = $this->getRequest()->getParams();
if (empty($q)) {
//there's nothing to do.
return;
}
$action = $p['action'];
$controller = $p['controller'];
$module = $p['module'];
unset($p['action'],$p['controller'],$p['module']);
$params = array_merge($p,$q);
$this->_helper->getHelper('Redirector')
->setCode(301)
->gotoSimple(
$action,
$controller,
$module,
$params);
}