Question

Im looking for a simple bit of code that will let me add the following html into my zend form:

<div id="wmd-button-bar" class="wmd-panel"></div>

Thats it, it needs to be above my ‘method’ element in the form but thats it. For such a simple action I cant find any methods that don’t involve me learning rocket science (i.e Zend Decorators).

Answer 1

The only way I can think of at the moment is to add a dummy element to the form and remove all decorators except an ‘HtmlTag’ with the attributes you specified in your question. Removing the decorators means that the actual element will not be rendered – only the HtmlTag decorator will be rendered.

so assuming your form is $form:

$form->addElement(
    'hidden',
    'dummy',
    array(
        'required' => false,
        'ignore' => true,
        'autoInsertNotEmptyValidator' => false,
        'decorators' => array(
            array(
                'HtmlTag', array(
                    'tag'  => 'div',
                    'id'   => 'wmd-button-bar',
                    'class' => 'wmd-panel'
                )
            )
        )
    )
);
$form->dummy->clearValidators();

Note that you want to prevent any validation of the element. This is only one way – there are likely others.

Output:

<div id="wmd-button-bar" class="wmd-panel"></div>

There is a good article describing decorators.