Multi Page Forms Help

MiK · #1 (**permalink**) 04-07-2008, 09:01 AM

Hello,
i'm looking for a quick&clean way (i'm asking too much.. i know

) to handle multipage forms.
Since the Zend_Form component is still not fully complete (File Upload and Multi Page support are missing) i can't figure out finding a way to handle them without repeating much code.

I tried to implement that code listed on the tutorial, but i found it incorrect, as there's some code which should go in the controller and not in the class extending zend_form or viceversa, and leads to a very tedious process in my case where i need different forms of this kind.

At this point i will make a step back and move out of zend_form component until is 100% complete.

Could you please post some examples (or links) on form handling without zend_form?

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

MiK · #2 (**permalink**) 04-09-2008, 09:43 AM

Hello,
Since i haven't found any solution to my issue, i managed to write something by myself.

I wrote an external extensible class, which provides (or tries to do so) the following features:

- Simple multi page form handling (all forms are extensions of my class)
- Data persistence using sessions
- Arbitrary step retrieving (in case you would edit some previous submitted step)
- Data validation/filtering for each step
- Stored data retrieving/deleting for each step

But does NOT (yet?) provide the following:

- Multi instance form handling (when the user opens multiple instances of the same form, using tabs for example, this uses the same session.. can't find a workaround for this)
- Conditional step retrieving (i don't need this, at the moment, neither i've got any idea on how implement this)
- Something else

Dependencies:
- Zend Framework version 1.5.1
- Zend_Form_*
- Zend_Session_*
- Zend_Controller_Request_Http

Here's a code snippet from my controller, just to let you see how it works:

PHP Code:


			
class TestController extends Controller
{
    function testAction()
    {
        require_once('Classes/Forms/MyForm.php');
        $form = new Form_MyForm();

        $form->setStepAction('/test/test')
             ->setStepMethod('post')
             ->setStepAttrib('enctype', 'multipart/form-data')
             ->setStepAttrib('id', 'myform')
             ->setStepPrefix('step_')
             ->setSessionNamespace('mysession')
             ->build();

        $request = $this->getRequest();

        // If this is a POST request ...
        if ($request->isPost()) {
            // i get the submitted form id
            $step = $form->getCurrentStepId($request);

            $data = $request->getPost();

            // if submitted step data is valid ..
            if ($form->isValidStep($step, $data)) {
                // store data into the session
                $form->saveStep($step);
                // get the next step available
                $currentStep = $form->getNextStep($step);
                // if there's no next step ...
                if ($currentStep === false) {
                    // ... we reached the end and we should handle form data
                    Zend_Debug::dump( $form->getValues(), "FORM COMPLETED");
                    exit;
                }
            // if data is not valid, we get the same form again
            } else {
                $currentStep = $form->getStep($step);

            }
        // If this is a normal GET request (/test/test/step/:id)
        } else {
            // We get the step id requested by the user
            $step = (int) $request->getParam('step');
            
            // If no step is requested, we assume the first step
            // and reset session data. 
            if ($step == 0) {
                $step = 1;
                $form->clearSession();
            }
            
            // Gets the requested step (if exists)
            if ($currentStep = $form->getStep($step)) {
                // If there's pre-submitted data in session, we use id
                // to repopulate form
                $form->populateStep($step);
                // Deletes data from session
                // (user should re-submit form again)
                $form->deleteStep($step);
            // This is just an error sample, we may throw an exception...
            } else {
                $currentStep = "STEP REQUESTED IS NOT VALID";
            }
        }
       
        // I use Smarty as View Renderer
        $this->view->form = $currentStep;
        echo $this->view->render('testform.tpl');
    }
}

If someone is interested, i will post the rest of the code (class, and form example).

Just a little disclaimer:

Quote:

I am not a zend framework expert, nor a professional php developer.
This is just an attempt to make the process of creating multi page forms, a bit less
tedious and a bit more maintenable. The code may be not written at best,
and requires improvements for sure.

Agenjo · #3 (**permalink**) 04-11-2008, 11:15 AM

Hello,
I'm also trying to use multi page forms with Zend_Form following the tutorial but as you said it's wrong at some points.

I think your code looks nice so, if it really works I'm interested on it.

So, could you reply with the whole code? You know: controller, form class and view (.phtml files). It'd help me a lot

Thanks and good job!!

MiK · #4 (**permalink**) 04-11-2008, 03:33 PM

Thanks for your interest.

Since i'm currently still developing the class, i don't have a "STABLE" release.
Please allow a couple of days in order to let me build a working example, and
so i will post the complete code as attachment here.

One of my last edit was the ability to fetch an array of a subform elements ( Multipage_Form::getStepElements() ) in order to pass it directly to the view,
and without being limited by zend_form decorators behaviour.

Something like:

PHP Code:


			
class MyController {

  // .. Some other code ..

  $this->view->form = $form->getStepElements($stepId);

  echo $this->view->render('mytemplate');

}

And in the view (as told before, i use smarty_view as view renderer):

HTML Code:

<table>
  <tr>
   <td>{$form.field1->getLabel()}</td>
   <td>{$form.field1}</td>
  <tr>
   <td colspan="2">{$form.submit}</td>
  </tr>
</table>

I've got too much work these days, i hope i'll be able to post the code within Monday. I'll keep you updated.

MiK · #5 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 08:19 PM

Finally i got it...

I created a little zend framework enviroment with a couple of very simple
examples.

Just copy the ZF libraries to /library/Zend and you're ready.

The class is located in /library/Form
All the forms are in /application/forms

Download: MultiPage_Form_with_Examples.zip
Class Documentation: MultiPage_Form_PhpDoc.zip

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