Question

i have created my own Zend_Form class currently just to add some helper functions and setdefault decorators.

now what i want to do is add some defaults (setMethod('post')) and add some elements (if u know the honeypot method to prevent spam bots.) how do i do it? in the __construct()?

Answer 1

Overwrite the contructor should be fine.

class Your_Form extends Zend_Form
{
    public function __construct($options = null)
    {
        $this->setMethod('POST');
        $this->addElement('hidden', 'hash', array('ignore' => true));
        parent::__construct($options);
    }

So your other Forms can extend Your_Form and call init(), so it stays consistent.

class Model_Form_Login extends Your_Form
{
    public function init()
    {
         $this->addElement('input', 'username');
         ...

If you overwrite the init()-Method you don’t have to call the parent::__construct()…

class Your_Form extends Zend_Form
{
    public function init()
    {
        $this->setMethod('POST');
        $this->addElement('hidden', 'hash', array('ignore' => true));

    }

… but all your extending Forms have to call parent::init() like so

class Model_Form_Login extends Your_Form
{
    public function init()
    {
         $this->addElement('input', 'username');
         ...
         parent::init();