Question

How would one go about having a multi step type form with zend. This is what I’m trying to do..

Normally I have a form, the user fills the form. When the form is submitted (post) AND is valid, I do the final action (add to the database or anything else).

public function indexAction(){
   $form = new Application_Form_Test();

   if(form is valid){
      //do the final thing.. add to the database or whatever
   }
   $this->view->form = $form;
}

What I want to do is insert a middle step. When the user submits the form, I don’t want to insert into the database right away. I want to first calculate some additional data, show the calculated data to the user in addition to the input he just entered, and display a confirm button. If the user presses submit, I do the final thing which is add to the database, otherwise I cancel out of the whole operation. So can someone think of a simple way to do this without doing a lot of crazy hacking?

Answer 1

I prepared a draft of a possible way to overcome your problem. Basically it involves two actions (indexAction and index2Action) and a session.

indexAction

public function indexAction() {
    $form = new Application_Form_Test();

    if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
        if ($form->isValid($_POST)) {

            // calculate some additional data
            $calculatedData = someCalulations();

            // if form is valid than save submitted and calculated data in a session
            $addAccInfoNamespace = new Zend_Session_Namespace('data');
            $addAccInfoNamespace->postData = $form->getValues();
            $addAccInfoNamespace->calculatedData = $calculatedData;
            $addAccInfoNamespace->lock();

            // and redirect to the second stage (or middle stage)
            return $this->_redirect('index/index2');
        }
    }
    $this->view->form = $form;
}

index2Action

 public function index2Action() {

        // retrieve data saved in the first stage (indexAction).
        $sessionData = new Zend_Session_Namespace('data');

        if (null === $sessionData->postData || null === $sessionData->calculatedData) {
            // if no data go to index, or throw execption or whatever.
            return $this->_redirect('index/index');
        }

        // get the data
        $oldPostData = $addAccInfoNamespace->postData;
        $calculatedData = $sessionData->calculatedData;

        // form that only shows cunfirmation button
        // However, if you want to show data in this form, that you need to 
        // populate Application_Form_Test2 with whatever data you want.
        $form = new Application_Form_Test2();


        if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
            if ($form->isValid($_POST)) {

                if (!$form->confirm->isChecked()) {
                    // if confirm submit button was NOT clicked go to e.g. index
                    // This may mean that ,e.g. cancel submit button was click.
                    return $this->_redirect('index/index');
                }


                //do the final thing.. add to the database or whatever


                // don't need this session namespace anymore
                Zend_Session::namespaceUnset('data');

                // and redirect to e.g. success confirmation page
                return $this->_redirect('index/success');
            }
        }

        // show confirmation button and additional calculated data
        $this->view->calculatedData = $calculatedData;
        $this->view->form = $form;
    }

What do you think?