Crtx_Form and MVC with Cerebral Cortex

Today I wanted to show you what I’m planning for Crtx_Form and to get some feedback on my ideas.

Crtx_Form will have three modes of usage:

1. OO Interface to build forms directly from PHP (a la HTML_QuickForm
2. XHTML-like XML syntax for use in Crtx_Template
3. Binding to a Crtx_DB DataObject

What this means is the following:

1. Using PHP OO Interface

1.  
2.  $form = new Crtx_Form;
3.  
4.  $username_element = $form->addElement(‘text‘, ‘username‘, ‘Username‘);
5.  $password_element = $form->addElement(‘password‘, ‘password‘, ‘Password‘);
6.  $email_element = $form->addElement(‘text‘, ‘email‘, ‘E-Mail‘);
7.  
8.  // Two ways to add validation
9.  $form->addValidation(‘username‘, ‘minlen‘,  6); // Use the element name
10.  $form->addValidation($username_element, ‘type‘, ‘alphanumeric‘); // Use the element object itself
11.  
12.  $form->addValidation(‘password‘, ‘minlen‘, ‘8‘);
13.  $form->addValidation($password_element, ‘type‘, ‘alphanumeric‘);
14.  
15.  $form->addValidation(‘email‘, ‘regex‘, ‘/^.*@.*$/‘);
16.  
17.  $form->toHTML();
18.  ?>

I haven’t decided whether or not to use different objects for each type of element, or even one for all of them – seems like bloat. However,

I’m going to be using DOM to build the form, so I may just use those objects :)

2. Using Crtx_Template

1.  <crtx:form>
2.      <crtx:label for=“username“>Usernamecrtx:label>
3.      <crtx:input type=“text” name=“username” minlength=“6” type=“alphanumeric” />
4.      <br />
5.      <crtx:label for=“password“>Passwordcrtx:label>
6.      <crtx:input type=“password” name=“password” minlength=“8” type=“alphanumeric” />
7.      <br />
8.      <crtx:label for=“email“>E-Mailcrtx:label>
9.      <crtx:input type=“text” name=“e-mail” regex=“/^.*@.*/” />
10.  crtx:form>

3. Binding to a DataObject

1.  
2.  $form = new Crtx_Form;
3.  $form->bind(‘My_DataObject_Class‘);
4.  
5.  /* Even when using a DataObject, you still need to add the submit button
6.  by hand, so its custom :) */
7.  
8.  $form->addElement(‘submit‘, ‘submit‘, ‘Submit Form‘);
9.  ?>

OR

1.  <crtx:form bind=“My_DataObject_Class“>
2.      <crtx:input type=“submit” name=“submit” value=“Submit Form” />
3.  crtx:form>

Note, that I didn’t include the submit buttons in the first 2 examples just to be lazy. But they should be there, they are not generated automatically.

Additionally, it will provide both serverside and clientside validation.

Finally, I wanted to say that with the addition of Crtx_Form, whilst it won’t be mandatory (I personally don’t like it much) it will be possible to follow the MVC pattern, using (M) Crtx_DB, (V) Crtx_Template and (C) Crtx_Form.

– Davey