forms, validation and elegance...

[GrelEns]

hello,

i have a website to do which will needs many forms, and i'm looking for an
elegant way to handle them...

i would like to know how do you use php and forms , how do you validate user
entries (on the server side, i'm not interested in javascript in this post)
and when needed how do you display error messages for bad or missing
entries.

i was thinking of using directly html and "include" them inside full php
pages, put here my trouble is that i still need to have php code inside what
i would like to be full html, at least for default value or when editing...
i can also think of having a php class to create a form but here it is the
opposite : html code inside php.

so i would like to have your opnion, thoughts on it, and how do you proceed
to separate php code which handle forms and theirs validations from html
used for presentation.

thanks.

ps : if you are not interested in it maybe you could tell how you handle
multilingual site... (by having everything in a database, by having some
kind of translation table, or as many pages as availables languages, or ???)

[Brad Kent]

There's probably some pretty good libraries out there for dealing with
forms..
I created a home-brew set of functions / procedures..

basically has 2 parts.

a form definition array where I define every field, whether or not
it's required (can be dependant on other fields), valid format (can be
a reg-exp), default value (if any), a "label", and any other params
that would be found in the input tag..

I define the layout of the form..

then I pass this array to a "handle form" function which prints out
the form.. it highlights any missed or invalid fields, etc..

works on multi-part/page forms, etc.. custom check-box graphics,
etc..
"GrelEns" <gr*****@NOSPAMyahoo.NOTNEEDEDfr> wrote in message news:<40***********************@news.free.fr>...

hello,

i have a website to do which will needs many forms, and i'm looking for an
elegant way to handle them...

i would like to know how do you use php and forms , how do you validate user
entries (on the server side, i'm not interested in javascript in this post)
and when needed how do you display error messages for bad or missing
entries.

i was thinking of using directly html and "include" them inside full php
pages, put here my trouble is that i still need to have php code inside what
i would like to be full html, at least for default value or when editing...
i can also think of having a php class to create a form but here it is the
opposite : html code inside php.

so i would like to have your opnion, thoughts on it, and how do you proceed
to separate php code which handle forms and theirs validations from html
used for presentation.

thanks.

ps : if you are not interested in it maybe you could tell how you handle
multilingual site... (by having everything in a database, by having some
kind of translation table, or as many pages as availables languages, or ???)

[GrelEns]

Brad Kent wrote:

There's probably some pretty good libraries out there for dealing with
forms..
I created a home-brew set of functions / procedures..

basically has 2 parts.

a form definition array where I define every field, whether or not
it's required (can be dependant on other fields), valid format (can be
a reg-exp), default value (if any), a "label", and any other params
that would be found in the input tag..

I define the layout of the form..

then I pass this array to a "handle form" function which prints out
the form.. it highlights any missed or invalid fields, etc..

works on multi-part/page forms, etc.. custom check-box graphics,
etc..

thanks for the answer,

is this librairy publicly available ?

best,

[Dan Tripp]

GrelEns wrote:

Brad Kent wrote:

There's probably some pretty good libraries out there for dealing with
forms..
I created a home-brew set of functions / procedures..

basically has 2 parts.

a form definition array where I define every field, whether or not
it's required (can be dependant on other fields), valid format (can be
a reg-exp), default value (if any), a "label", and any other params
that would be found in the input tag..

I define the layout of the form..

then I pass this array to a "handle form" function which prints out
the form.. it highlights any missed or invalid fields, etc..

works on multi-part/page forms, etc.. custom check-box graphics,
etc..

thanks for the answer,

is this librairy publicly available ?

best,

There's a PEAR class that does a lot of what you're seeking:
http://pear.php.net/package/HTML_QuickForm/

I haven't used it (yet), but it looks handy.

Regards,

- Dan
http://blog.dantripp.com/

[cfm]

You can look at http://phpformgen.sourceforge.net I just downloaded it, but
haven't used in in production. It looks quite good, though...
"GrelEns" <gr*****@NOSPAMyahoo.NOTNEEDEDfr> wrote in message
news:40***********************@news.free.fr...

hello,

i have a website to do which will needs many forms, and i'm looking for an
elegant way to handle them...

i would like to know how do you use php and forms , how do you validate user entries (on the server side, i'm not interested in javascript in this post) and when needed how do you display error messages for bad or missing
entries.

i was thinking of using directly html and "include" them inside full php
pages, put here my trouble is that i still need to have php code inside what i would like to be full html, at least for default value or when editing... i can also think of having a php class to create a form but here it is the
opposite : html code inside php.

so i would like to have your opnion, thoughts on it, and how do you proceed to separate php code which handle forms and theirs validations from html
used for presentation.

thanks.

ps : if you are not interested in it maybe you could tell how you handle
multilingual site... (by having everything in a database, by having some
kind of translation table, or as many pages as availables languages, or ???)