Question

So I use a zend framework, but for all commercial projects I am not using zend form component.
HTML+Js coders are working on frontend and I don’t want to have nothing with it, I just connect the final view in my zf based application.

So for example I have in view a html form which looks like this:

http://pastie.org/1668143

So form design, elements and classes can be changed by frontend coders, and I want to know is there easy way for me, to use zend form with this concept (in each project form code looks different of course )?

My main problem here is code duplication in my controllers, which in this case looks something like this:

http://pastie.org/1668023 (please don’t take exceptions and loggedMember seriously, they are just used for this snippet, to demonstrate a problem, which I have)

So, what would be the best solution for problem which I have, what do u think 🙂 ?

Answer 1

If you have absolutely no control over the form’s html structure, but still want to maximize the use of Zend_Form’s features, use Zend_Form_Decorator_ViewScript.

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.form.standardDecorators.html (last section)

$element->setDecorators(array(array('ViewScript', array(
'viewScript' => '_element.phtml',
'class'      => 'form element'
))));

I would do it like this:

1. create a form class that has all elements, validators and filters
2. create an instance of the form in your action and set the view script(s) (this way you can change them per controller and still have very little duplicated definition code.