I'm trying to build a form using the Zend_Form component, but the number of elements varies. The information for each Zend_Form element is stored in a database (name, options, validators, filters, etc.).
The application I'm working on consists of building surveys which contain a varying number of questions. Each question is associated with different arrays of answers. Ultimately my goal is to build arrays of radio/checkbox buttons, dynamically, server-side.
I'm looking for a pretty way to generate my form, but I'm not sure of the best way to load the model within the form. Should the model be loaded in the controller then passed (somehow, via a parameter?) directly to the form, or is it better to load the model within the Form init() method? Where's the best place to put the logic, should it be within the form class, or within the controller, or within the model?
My idea is to fetch form element properties (name, rules, filters, etc.) in the database, then iterate and finally render the form. What do you think of this approach? Ultimately, elements will be dynamically added (client-side), this time, using AJAX and a JavaScript library (such as jQuery).
Here are a couple useful links I found via Google, but I think they all answer a slightly different question than mine:
On building dynamic forms, server side:
http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFPROP/Zend_Form+generation+from+models+-+Jani+Hartikainen
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/200-Using-Zend_Form-in-Your-Models.html
http://codeutopia.net/blog/2009/01/07/another-idea-for-using-models-with-forms/
On building dynamic forms, client side, with AJAX processing:
http://www.jeremykendall.net/2009/01/19/dynamically-adding-elements-to-zend-form/
I think I found a possible solution, it involves passing an array of Zend Form elements to the Zend Form::__construct() method. The constructor takes an array of options, one of them is called "elements". Have a look at the source code within the Zend Framework library.
I coded a new private method within the controller, called buildSurveyForm(). Note : the object, passed as a parameter, is built from a huge SQL query with half a dozen JOIN statements, fetching data from a few tables (surveys, questions, answers, etc.) within the database. One of the public attributes for this class consists of an array of questions, stored as objects (with public methods/attributes as well, etc.). Same for answers. The code for building these classes is pretty trivial and out of topic here.
Here's the code within the survey controller. I copy/pasted and edited/dropped a few lines to make it a lot clearer :
private function buildSurveyForm(MyApp_Object_Survey $survey)
{
foreach ($survey->questions as $question)
{
$element = new Zend_Form_Element_MultiCheckbox($question->order);
$element->addMultiOptions($question->getAnswersLabels());
$element->setName($question->order);
$element->setLabel($question->title);
$elements[] = $element;
}
// Here's the trick :
$formOptions = array('elements' => $elements);
$surveyForm = new MyApp_Survey_Form($formOptions);
$urlHelper = $this->_helper->getHelper('url');
$surveyForm->setAction($urlHelper->url(array(
'controller' => 'survey',
'action' => 'vote'),
'default'
));
$surveyForm->setMethod('post');
$this->_forms['survey'] = $surveyForm;
return $this->_forms['survey'];
}
The MyApp Survey Form class only contains a Submit button within the init() method. The dynamically generated elements with the code above are added BEFORE this submit button (which is unexpected, but useful). This class simply extends Zend_Form.
Then, within survey controller / view action :
public function viewAction()
{
$surveyModel = $this->_model['survey'];
$survey = $surveyModel->getFullSurvey($this->_getParam('id'));
$survey = new MyApp_Object_Survey($survey);
// Calls above private method :
$surveyForm = $this->buildSurveyForm($survey);
$this->view->assign(array(
'surveyForm' => $surveyForm,
));
}
Adding filters, validators and decorators to form elements is now trivial. My proposal is a bit dirty, but I think it gets the job done. I will add a new proposal if I find something more elegant. Feel free to post different answers/solutions.
You could extend Zend_Form.
Zend form is not good place for logic, only form representation.
So, Load all needed elements using model in controller and pass them to the form in contructor as parameters.
Related
Simple problem but can't find a solution: I have a Thymeleaf form used to add a new object, say of a Book class. It works perfectly well and I only need that particular form for adding new objects, not editing the existing ones. The question is: how can I put several objects of the Book class in the same single form? So, purely for convenience, instead of filling form for a single book and clicking Send you can fill form for several books at once and only then click Send, have them all inserted into the database (in whatever order) and also have the option to fill the form partially (e.g. the form has room for 5 books but it will also accept 1, 2, 3 or 4 and you can leave the rest blank).
Edit: I've tried passing a list of object to the Thymeleaf template with the form bound to the whole list and iteration inside, but Thymeleaf throws BingingResultError upon rendering it.
You need to use a wrapper object to realize what you want.
Something like:
public class BooksCreationDto {
private List<Book> books;
// default and parameterized constructor
public void addBook(Book book) {
this.books.add(book);
}
// getter and setter
}
Then you need to pass this object as a model attribute in your controller:
BooksCreationDto booksForm = new BooksCreationDto();
model.addAttribute("form", booksForm);
bind fields using index property
th:field="*{books[__${itemStat.index}__].title}"
and get back the result with
#ModelAttribute BooksCreationDto form
in your controller.
For a complete and detailled explaination visit: https://www.baeldung.com/thymeleaf-list
I've built a Zend_Form_Decorator_Input class which extends Zend_Form_Decorator_Abstract, so that I could customize my form inputs -- works great. I ran into a problem in the decorate class, in trying to get the form name of the element, so as to built a unique id for each field (in case there are multiple forms with identical field names).
There is no method like this: Zend_Form_Element::getForm(); It seems Zend_Form_Decorator_Abstract doesn't have this ability either. Any ideas?
I don't think changing the id from the decorator is the right approach. At the time the decorator is called the element already has been rendered. Thus changing the id would have no effect to the source code. Additionally, as you already have pointed out, the relation between a form and its elements is unidirectional, i.e. (to my best knowledge) there is no direct way to access the form from the element.
So far the bad news.
The good news is, that there actually is a pretty easy solution to your problem: The Zend_Form option elementsBelongTo. It prevents that the same ID is assigned to two form elements that have the same name but belong to different forms:
$form1 = new Zend_Form(array('elementsBelongTo' => 'form1'));
$form1->addElement('Text', 'text1');
$form2 = new Zend_Form(array('elementsBelongTo' => 'form2'));
$form2->addElement('Text', 'text1');
Although both forms have a text field named 'text1', they have different ids: 'form1-text1' and 'form2-text1'. However, there is a major drawback to this: This also changes the name elements in such a way that they are in the format formname[elementname]. Therefore $this->getRequest()->getParam('formname') will return an associative array containing the form elements.
So, I have a form for editing blog articles.
Among other things I need to be able to edit article tags. They are stored as ArrayCollection inside my Blog entity. (ManyToMany cascade: persist,remove)
Now, Simfony handles this type of data with <select> tag and it works just fine for selecting, but I want to be able to remove and add tags too.
This is also possible and is very well explained in this Cookbook article: How to Embed a Collection of Forms
However, result of this tutorial is still not very elegant and I would love to have input box similar to StackOverflow tag box.
Since there are many already done solutions under free licences I decided to just use one of them, for example jQuery Tags Input.
Basically, all I need to do is run $('#tags_input_box').tagsInput() and it transforms it into SO-like tag box.
Now, I'm searching for the easiest way to bind some custom made input to my form and submit it back together with the rest of 'genuine' fields in a shape that will be understood by Symfony2.
Could anyone refer me to some document or give me some starting info where I should begin my research on this matter ?
It appears that plugin sends it in as a comma-separated string value.
Probably the easiest way would be to simply treat it as a single input in your form, and then split it up when you process the form.
// Entity to hold it in string form.
namespace Some\Entity;
class TagStringEntity {
protected $tagString;
// getTagString and setTagString
}
// Custom form type.
// Use this AbstractType in your form.
namespace Some\Form;
Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
class TagType extends AbstractType {
public buildForm(FormBuilder $builder, array $options) {
$builder->add('tagString'); // will default to text field.
}
}
// In Controller
public function displayFormAction() {
// Join the tags into a single string.
$tagString = implode(',', $article->getTags()); // assuming it returns an array of strings.
$tagStringType = new TagStringType();
$tagStringType->setTagString($tagString);
// build form, etc...
}
public function checkFormAction() {
// ...
if ($form->isValid()) {
// Get the tag string, split it, and manually create your separated tag objects to store.
}
}
That's probably the cleanest and simplest way to do it using that jQuery plugin. Takes a bit of working around since you are turning multiple items into many and vice versa, but not too bad.
I don't really know how to word the title well, but here's my issue. I decided instead of having 25 controllers to handle pages, I have one PageController with a viewAction that takes in a :page parameter - for example, http://localhost/website/page/about-us would direct to PageController::viewAction() with a parameter of page = about-us. All of the pages are stored in a templates folder, so the viewrenderer is set to render application\templates\default\about-us.phtml.
I did this so I can consolidate and it seemed like a better approach. My question is the following: lets say when the page request is contact-us, I would need a Zend_Form to be used within the contact page. So, I would need a way within PageController::viewAction() to recognize that the page needs to have a form built, build the form, and also upon submission the need to process it (maybe this should be handled in an abstract process method - not sure).
I have no idea how to implement this. I thought maybe I can store a column with the name of a form and a connecting page identifier. Even better, create a one-to-many page to forms, and then in the submission loop through the forms and check if submitted and if so then process it (maybe there is a isSubmitted() method within zend_form. I really don't know how to handle this, and am looking for any help i can get.
Thanks!
Here is something that came to mind that may work or help point you in a direction that works for you.
This may only work well assuming you were to have no more than one form per page, if you need more than one form on a page, you would have to do something beyond this automatic form handling.
Create a standard location for forms that are attached to pages (e.g. application/forms/page). This is where the automatic forms associated with pages will be kept.
In your viewAction, you could take advantage of the autoloader to see if a form for that page exists. For example:
$page = $this->getParam('page');
$page = ucfirst(preg_replace('/-(\w)/ie', "strtoupper('$1')", $page)); // contact-us -> ContactUs
$class = 'Application_Form_Page_' . $page;
// class_exists will invoke the autoloader to map a class to a file
if (class_exists($class)) {
// a form is defined for this page
$form = new $class();
// check if form was posted
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
if ($form->isValid($this->getRequest()->getPost()) {
// form is valid - determine how to process it
}
}
// assign the form to the view
$this->view->pageForm = $form;
}
All this really leaves out is the action you take to process a specific form. Since the contact form will likely generate an email, and another form may insert data into a database, you will need some sort of callback system or perhaps another class that can be mapped automatically which contains the form processor code.
Anyway something along those lines is what came to mind first, I hope that helps give you some more ideas.
I have a form with 2 elements that will be submitted and then update part of a user profile.
I don't want to use the entire generated form and have to remove all the fields except for the two I need. I just want to be able to create a quite simple form to do my update.
Is there a way to utilize Symfony's sfValidatorEmail inside the action on the returned value of an email field?
Since the regex is already written in the validator, I would like to reuse it, but I don't know how to use it in the action after the non-symfony form has been submitted.
Two approaches here - you could construct a simple form anyway extending from sfForm/sfFormSymfony (doesn't have to be ORM-based) that just contains the 2 fields you want. That way you can use the existing validation framework, and then use $myForm->getValues() after everything has been validated to get your values for your profile update.
Alternatively, as you've mentioned, you can use the sfValidatorEmail class in your action like so:
$dirtyValue = "broken.email.address"
$v = new sfValidatorEmail();
try
{
$v->clean($dirtyValue);
}
catch (sfValidatorError $e)
{
// Validation failed
}
The latter approach quickly leads to messy code if you have many values that need cleaning, and it's worth putting the logic back into a form to handle this in the usual manner.
If you're submitting a form with 2 elements, it should be a form on the edit and update end, period. Symfony forms are lightweight, there's no performance reason to not use them. Instead, make a custom form for this purpose:
class ProfileUpdateForm extends ProfileForm
{
public function configure()
{
$this->useFields(array('email', 'other_field'));
}
}