Question

This might sound like an odd scenario, but I’ve got two forms on one page. One is just posting back to itself. I made the second post to another action to keep the code cleaner. Maybe not the right choice…

The problem I’m having now is that if that second form doesn’t validate, I redirect back to the page with the form but I don’t know how to keep my form fields filled in with the original information the user entered. Is there a way to do that and keep posting to two separate actions, or do I need to just bite the bullet and have both forms post back to the same action and deal with the messy logic?

Answer 1

I would submit both forms to the same action. There really shouldn’t be anything too messy about it. In each form include a hidden field to signify which form is being submitted.

Application_Form_Login:

 /* other form elements */
 $this->addElement('hidden', 'login', array(
      'value' => 1
 ));

Application_Form_Register:

 /* other form elements */
 $this->addElement('hidden', 'register', array(
      'value' => 1
 ));

Controller:

$loginForm = new Application_Form_Login();
$registerForm = new Application_Form_Register();

if($this->_request->isPost()) {
     if($this->_request->getPost('login')) {
         if($loginForm->isValid($this->_request->getPost())) {
             // validated, redirect
             $this->_helper->redirector('profile', 'user');
         }
     }
     if($this->_request->getPost('register')) {
         if($registerForm->isValid($this->_request->getPost())) {
             // validated, proceed as needed
         }
     }
}

$this->view->loginForm = $loginForm;
$this->view->registerForm = $registerForm;

View:

echo $this->loginForm;

echo $this->registerForm;

With this type of a setup, if either of your forms fail validation, isValid() will preserve any data that has been entered and you still redirect on a successful validation of one or both of the forms.