Question

After a user fills in a form but does not fill a required field the form is returned with the element in question with the error message – all the fields previously filled are filled out again but the data being entered has & instead of &.

How does zend populate a form that is submit and returned with user errors. How can i filter/run html_entity_decode on them.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use Zend_Filter with a callback on a particular method to filter your field.

From the Zend documentation:

Callback

This filter allows you to use own methods in conjunction with
Zend_Filter. You don’t have to create a new filter when you already
have a method which does the job.

Supported options for Zend_Filter_Callback The following options are
supported for Zend_Filter_Callback:

callback: This sets the callback which should be used.

options: This property sets the options which are used when the
callback is processed

So basically, your element filter would look like this:

$myElement->addFilter('Callback', array('callback' => array($this, 'myFilter')))

And in the same class, you can create a method named myFilter() that takes a $value parameter.
This function can return html_entity_decode; for example. You could also use an inline function using PHP 5.3+: function($v){return(html_entity_decode($v);)}.