Comments on: Using Zend_Form with Zend_Config

By: Apit

Apit — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:52:16 +0000

Hi. I am new zfform. Your post helps me understand and appeciate customizability of zfform more. Thx.

By: Andrew Vayanis

Andrew Vayanis — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:31:35 +0000

I just went to look at the new documentation, and this does address my concerns. However, it might be worth pointing out that these types of disconnects, are prevalent elsewhere within the Zend Framework’s documentation. Unless, they have also been addressed with the release of 1.5?

Anyhow, I still like how things are coming, keep up the good work!

By: Matthew Weier O'Phinney

Matthew Weier O'Phinney — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:54:41 +0000

Something to note: you were reading the documentation prior to the final release of 1.5.0. I put a lot of work into the documentation in that final week, and the results are online now.

In the documentation, there is a ‘Configuration’ section for each subcomponent of Zend_Form. In these, I have language such as the following:

* If ’set’ + key refers to a Zend_Form_Element method, then the value provided will be passed to that method.
* Otherwise, the value will be used to set an attribute.

Hopefully this addresses your documentation concerns with Zend_Form. I realize there are a lot more places where it needs improvement — e.g., more examples on decorators — but hopefully your primary concerns have been addressed.

By: Andrew Vayanis

Andrew Vayanis — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:04:33 +0000

Don’t want this to come off as snobby, so I preface before saying it, but as stated in the post, when ZF looks up class methods using the Zend_Config, method calls are prepended with ’set’. Therefore, internally, ZF is actually calling setMessages().

As you said the documentation is pretty good on the PHP side, and a bit lacking on the config side. However, there is also a bit of a disconnect which I will hope to bridge (with my own posts) as I learn the framework myself. The tidbit about prepending ’set’ to method calls is just one of many examples I am sure you will find as you go through things.

By: VINCENT

VINCENT — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:29:09 +0000

Thanks Andrew for the reply, I really appreciate the reply, you got me out of a big hole (I was about to abandon config files for my forms and use nasty php).

I’m also still learning the Zend Framework (24 hours into it) and I’ve decided to completely rebuild my apps using it :).

I think its a very good framework to use, it is a bit of a learning curve to get into the MVC pattern, but after that, its pretty easy. Most of it is just getting around the idea of a MVC file structure and a bootstrapper.

I must say however, the Zend Framework does provide very good documentation on the PHP side, but it does lack documentation on formatting config ini files and config xml files, which is a shame because all web 2.0 websites driven by AJAX is built on the idea of text config files. I hope that they fix that up soon.

Other than that, thank god for open source discussion.

btw. how did you figure out to use messages instead of setmessages (from setMessages();)?

By: Andrew Vayanis

Andrew Vayanis — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:45:02 +0000

I was actually going to throw in another post regarding this, but I will show you now what I did to set custom validation messages because the defaults are definitely horrible.

elements.username.type = “text”
elements.username.options.label = “Username:”
elements.username.options.required = true
elements.username.options.validators.notempty.validator = “NotEmpty”
elements.username.options.validators.notempty.options.messages.isEmpty = “A valid username is required.”
elements.username.options.validators.notempty.breakChainOnFailure = true
elements.username.options.validators.alnum.validator = “alnum”
elements.username.options.validators.alnum.breakChainOnFailure = true
elements.username.options.validators.alnum.options.messages.notAlnum = “Invalid username. Please enter a valid username.”
elements.username.options.validators.strlen.validator = “StringLength”
elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.min = “5″
elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.max = “30″
elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.messages.stringLengthTooShort = “Invalid username. Please enter a valid username.”
elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.messages.stringLengthTooLong = “Invalid username. Please enter a valid username.”

I am still learning the Zend Framework myself, but I hope this helps. Also, feel free to ask any other questions, and I will answer what I can.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:43:44 +0000

Thanks for the article! it was very very helpful.

I love using ini config files, it makes maintaining code a million times easier than messing with php coding.

but i’ve hit a brick wall. i’ve tried setting custom validation error messages with no luck… do you have any ideas?

; orderFullName element
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.type = text
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.label = Full Name
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.size = 25
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.maxlength = 25
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.validators.strlen.validator = StringLength
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.validators.strlen.options.min = 2
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.validators.strlen.options.max = 25
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.required = true
cartForm.elements.orderFullName.options.required.setMessages = Required field