Check if a specific validation_group is valid in Symfony Form? - forms

Question

I'm building a complex symfony form which is a bit long and contains other embedded forms. Thus the form is displayed in the UI in separate tabs to make it more readable and convenient for the user.
Because the form is long and separated in the UI there is a chance you've missed something while populating it or you just inserted something incorrect. That's when the validation would kick in and stop the form from being saved. The validation itself is configured and works flawlessly.
My problem here is I have a gigantic form, separated in tabs, which has an error somewhere and I need to browse each one of the tabs to see exactly what's wrong. I was thinking to make that specific tab, containing fields with errors, in another color so it could stand out and save you the time of wondering what's wrong and where it is located.
From what I could see, I have two options:
Check all fields per tab, manually, using something like:
{% if not form.children.FIELD_NAME.vars.valid %}
which would take forever to complete and I would do only if it's the only possible way.
Try using validation_groups => array('Default', 'my_tab_name') and logically group the fields for each tab.
I'm really hoping to use the second method, but I can't seem to figure out how to check if the validation group i.e. my_tab_1 contains any errors. I'm aware I can do something like this:
$validator = $this->get('validator');
$my_tab_1 = $validator->validate($entity, null, array('my_tab_1'));
$my_tab_2 = $validator->validate($entity, null, array('my_tab_2'));
$my_tab_3 = $validator->validate($entity, null, array('my_tab_3'));
// so on
But the form is already being validated with $form->validate() and using this approach would trigger N more unnecessary validations.
So the question here is how to check if a specific validation group is valid from a twig template? If that's not possible, can one get it from the Controller and pass it as a variable without doing yet another validation?
I don't think I need to post the FormTypes because they're long, nested and might only confuse you. However, this is an oversimplified version of the parent form:
class CompanyType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('name')
->add('address')
->add('representedBy')
->add('category')
->add('phone')
->add('member', new MemberType())
->add('contacts', new ContactType())
->add('notes', new NoteType())
// and a couple more embedded form types.
;
}
/**
* #param OptionsResolverInterface $resolver
*/
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'App\FooBundle\Entity\Company',
'cascade_validation' => true
));
}
/**
* #return string
*/
public function getName()
{
return 'app_company';
}
}
If anybody has a better idea or solution, I would really appreciate it.

Answer 1

First you can use tabs in two different ways:
a) With javascript. All the content of the tabs are loaded once and can be found in the source of the page. All tab-content is hidden except one.
b) With links and PHP. In this case every tab is another webpage with another URL.
(hopefully you understand the difference)
I always use the second method for my advanced forms. Thus for each page i only add a part of all the formfields in the formtype. For each page i use one validation group too. This is already enough to EDIT existing entities.
But a problem is a new Entity. You might want to avoid partly filled entities in your database, thus you need to validate and then store every 'step' in the session and after the user has finished last step (and validation was okay) you might want to store all the form-fields in one time into the database.
This method is used by the craueformflowbundle.
To get a part of your formfields simply use a switch in your formType or create a formType for each step.
namespace AppBundle\Form;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolverInterface;
class CompanyType extends AbstractType
{
/**
* #param FormBuilderInterface $builder
* #param array $options
*/
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
switch ($options['flow_step']) {
case 1:
$builder
->add('company')
->add('origin')
;
break;
case 2:
$builder
->add('contactPerson', NULL, array('label' => 'Volledige naam'))
->add('email', 'email', array('label' => 'Email'))
->add('telephone', NULL, array('label' => 'Telefoonnummer'))
;
break;
}
}
/**
* #param OptionsResolverInterface $resolver
*/
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'AppBundle\Entity\Company',
'flow_step' => 1
));
}
/**
* #return string
*/
public function getName()
{
return 'appbundle_company';
}
}