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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T13:51:25+00:00

I’m wanting to create a form builder that creates HTML forms programmatically with PHP,

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I’m wanting to create a form builder that creates HTML forms programmatically with PHP, but I’m wanting it to be object-orientated. This lead me to looking at PHP’s DOM extension, but it seems to work on the concept of full HTML (and XML) documents rather than portions of the DOM.

Therefore, is it possible in PHP to create HTML in an object-orientated way? For example, my pseudo-code may look as follows:

<?php

$form = new HTMLElement('form', array('method' => 'post', 'action' => 'contact.php'));

$fieldset = $form->addElement(new HTMLElement('fieldset'));
$fieldset->addElement(new HTMLElement('input', array(
    'type' => 'text',
    'name' => 'name'
)));
$fieldset->addElement(new HTMLElement('input', array(
    'type' => 'email',
    'name' => 'email'
)));
// and so on...

echo $form->asHTML();
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can use DOMDocument (requires PHP 5, btw):

    <?php

$html = new DOMDocument('1.0','iso-8859-1');
$html->formatOutput = true;

$form = $html->createElement('form');

$fieldset = $html->createElement('fieldset');

$name = $html->createElement('input');
$name->setAttribute('type', 'text');
$name->setAttribute('name', 'name');

$email = $html->createElement('input');
$email->setAttribute('type', 'text');
$email->setAttribute('name', 'email');

$fieldset->appendChild($name);
$fieldset->appendChild($email);

$form->appendChild($fieldset);

$html->appendChild($form);

echo html_entity_decode($html->saveHTML());

    http://codepad.org/sK0j6zD3

    Which outputs:

    <form><fieldset>
<input type="text" name="email"><input type="text">
</fieldset></form>

    A more complete document:

    <?php

class br extends DOMElement {
    function __construct() {
        parent::__construct('br');
    }
}

$page = new DOMDocument();
$page->normalizeDocument();
$page->formatOutput = true;

$html = $page->createElement('html');
$head = $page->createElement('head');
$title = $page->createElement('title');
$body = $page->createElement('body');
$form = $page->createElement('form');
$fieldset = $page->createElement('fieldset');
$name = $page->createElement('input');
$email = $page->createElement('input');
$submit = $page->createElement('input');

$title_text = $page->createTextNode('Page Title Here');
$title->appendChild($title_text);

$head->appendChild($title);

$html->appendChild($head);

$name->setAttribute('type', 'text');
$name->setAttribute('name', 'name');

$email->setAttribute('type', 'text');
$email->setAttribute('name', 'email');

$submit->setAttribute('type','submit');
$submit->setAttribute('value','Submit');

$fieldset->appendChild($page->createTextNode('Name: '));
$fieldset->appendChild($name);
$fieldset->appendChild(new br);
$fieldset->appendChild($page->createTextNode('Email: '));
$fieldset->appendChild($email);
$fieldset->appendChild(new br);
$fieldset->appendChild($submit);

$form->appendChild($fieldset);

$body->appendChild($form);

$html->appendChild($body);

$page->appendChild($html);

echo "<!DOCTYPE html>\n" . html_entity_decode($page->saveHTML());

    http://codepad.org/uRNoW3nN

    Which outputs:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>Page Title Here</title></head>
<body><form><fieldset>Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br>Email: <input type="text" name="email"><br><input type="submit" value="Submit">
</fieldset></form></body>
</html>
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