Beth Granter

Zend Form – custom decorators

Posted in PHP

So I’m learning PHP and Zend Framework and MVC stuff. And I just figured out how to do a custom decorator on Zend_Form to change the way the form is written to HTML. The default puts each element label and input box into dd and dl tags. I just wanted to put each element in a div, with the input box on the same line as the label. There may be better ways to do this, but this is what I put in the IndexController.php file:

$form = new Zend_Form(array(
    'elementDecorators'=>array(
       'ViewHelper',
       array(
          'Description',
          array(
             'tag'=>'div',
             'class'=>'help'
          )
       ),
       'Errors',
       array('Label'),
       array(
          'HtmlTag',
           array(
              'tag'=>'div',
              'class'=>'field'
           )
        )
    ),
    'decorators'=>array(
        'FormElements',
        array(
          'HtmlTag',
          array('tag' => '<div>')
        ),
        'Form',
     ),
    'method' => 'post',
    'action' =>'/url/to/form',
    'elements' => array(
        'name' => array('text', array(
            'label' => 'Name:'
        )),
        'subject' => array('text', array(
            'label' => 'Subject:'
         )),
        'submit' => array('submit', array(
            'label' => 'Add',
        ))
    ),
 ));
 $form->submit->removeDecorator('Label');
 return $form;
}
 public function formAction()
 {
      $this->view->form = $form;
 }

The $form->submit->removeDecorator(’Label’) bit removes the extra ‘Add’ from the submit button.

Then you just put
echo $this->form;
in your form.phtml

(This form does nothing)

This results in HTML like:

<form method="post" action="/route/to/form">
   <div>
      <div class="field">
         <label for="name" class="optional">Name:</label>
         <input type="text" name="subject" id="subject" value="">
      </div>
      <div class="field">
          <label for="subject" class="optional">Subject:</label>
          <input type="text" name="subject" id="subject" value="">
      </div>
      <div class="field">
           <input name="submit" id="submit" value="Add" type="submit">
      </div>
   </div>
</form>

Instead of the default dd and dl layed out form.

Posted by Beth Granter @ 28 April 2008

11 comments

19/03/2008 - My PHP for beginners notes

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Comments

Apr 28, 2008
2:45 pm

#1 Matthew Weier O'Phinney :

Nice work, Beth! If you want to learn even more about form decorators, keep an eye on http://devzone.zend.com/ this week — I have a tutorial on them posting later in the week.

May 13, 2008
5:08 pm

#2 joshteam :

Hey Beth, ha. You stole my design!!! lol just kidding, ironically enough I am writting about the same stuff. Instead of divs i do ul/lis check it out, i’d love your feedback!

May 14, 2008
12:46 pm

#3 Beth Granter :

Did I? I got a bit of the above from somewhere but I lost where it was, and had changed it a quite bit anyway. I’ll check yours out if you tell me where it is!

May 15, 2008
12:51 am

#4 joshteam :

haha, i was talking about the blog theme! we picked the same ones. http://joshteam.wordpress.com is my blog. How long have you been doing php, and more importantly.. zend framework?

May 15, 2008
9:02 am

#5 Beth Granter :

Ah right ha. Yeah you have almost all the same widgets too. I’ve been doing PHP for about a month and zend framework for about 3 weeks! Never done ANY programming before so it’s a bit hard for me, particularly cos we’re doing it MVC style. (Not counting HTML and CSS as programming!). What about you?

May 25, 2008
2:37 pm

#6 joshteam :

I just got back from vacation *hence my absence* but I’ve been doing web deving since I was oh, 13? Programming for the past 5 years, mainly php. ZF for about 7-8mo. It’s actually going to save you a TON of headaches by getting you feet wet with OO & MVC. It may seem challenging to pick up on it being green and all, but if you were to become a procedural pro the jump would even be harder.

The one area that I am new to is blogging hah. So what company do you work for up in NYC?

May 26, 2008
2:31 pm

#7 Beth Granter :

NYC? What makes you think I am there? I wish! I am working for the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK.

Jul 15, 2008
12:58 pm

#8 unioni :

Cheese. The adult form of milk.–Richard Condon (1915–1996), U.S. novelist, A Talent For Loving, 1961

Jan 4, 2009
8:52 pm

#9 Ben :

Lovely little tutorial, Beth! This is really a confusing thing to work with, I’ve found. I was having a bit of a tough time figuring out how to wrap both the label and input in a tag.

May 2, 2009
7:07 pm

#10 Cliburn M. Solano :

Hi,

Nice tutorial!! I’ve tried sticking with Zend’s default dt/dd tags for a ‘Date of Birth’ select tag group (Month-Day-Year). What I’m trying to create is like this:

DOB:

Jan
Feb

01
02

1994
1993

The closest solution that I got is the reverse of it:

Jan
Feb

01
02

1994
1993

DOB:

by adding a select element like this (month only):

$this->addElement(’select’, ‘birthday_month’,

array(