Zendcasts Forum

I mean the first you suggested. What did the discussion end with? Do you think it is possible to do?

The last suggestion is something I'm going to need, but haven't really thought about it before so I'll definitely be looking into that as well.

Yeah, that is a good question. I have not thought about those things. I am not that far in my program yet, but eventually I need to find a way to do it.

So now I'm as far as figuring out how to do this. I'm gonna think out loud and try to explain the situation.

Short info: I use Doctrine, if that would be relevant

The core of the application is to make registration forms or polls, which needs to have the ability to make custom fields/choose the fields needed. Without this capability it would be only one possible hardcoded  (or several different hardcoded) form(s). So the point is to be able to define the fields needed.

I have a model called Form which has a set of attributes (or the table have fields). This is a no-brainer to do with Zend_Form, but a form in my application is not complete without one or more fields (Field model) related to it (the actual fields a user would fill inn to be registered or vote for inn a poll).
A picture to explain the database
Word definitions:
form = form in the application (Form + Field)
fields = fields in a html form (inputs, textarea, etc)
Form = Doctrine based model for meta data about a registration/poll (name,time frame, description, etc)
Field = Doctrine based model that stores info about the fields in the (required, name,  small description, type, etc)

I have wondered (for when an admin create a new form with the application) if it's possible to just make a Zend_Form, that you normally would to pass on data to be persisted, for Form but just leave out the submit element and sneak inn the extra fields (Field) in the view and then send them in the same post as the Zend_Form. And then filter out the fields belonging to the Form model, persist them, thus leaving the Field data left to be persisted.
Would this work? Do you have any other solutions?

Then, for making the form that the user are going to fill out, I could try to do what iznogood suggested in the post above.

What do you guys (or girls?) suggest? I kinda rely on you to help me out here.:)

Just let me know if I need to explain more.:) I'm not sure if explained it clearly enough.

Last edited by harri (2010-06-05 00:11:39)

Okay, i somehow never saw this discussion but I guess to maybe have some ideas for you. i don't know if you can need them anymore, but I hope to find out

@harri
Zend_Form implements the ability to generate from config, so if you offer some interface to generate a config, you could save this one in your db and populate Zend_Form with it, generating a user-generated form.
alternativly you maybe like to iterate over your db data and then pass it on to $form->addElement($type, $name, $otherConf);

@Jacks-hon
I guess you're calling via XHTTPRequest aka AJAX - so the most simplest thing to do would be in your phpfile:
[code=php]
header('Content-type: application/json');
echo json_encode($yourDataArray);
# or the Zend way
echo Zend_Json::encode($yourDataArray);
[/code]
Zend_Json has the advantage that you don't have to care if the php extension for json_encode is activated, it will fall back to a (slower) php implementation.

this way you generate a javascript object for your html page to fetch.
after that theres only javascript magic left to do

aye, i just realized that with your HTML being on another domain you have to AJAX a php-proxy bcs of the same-origin-policy.
if you can't use a php-proxy maybe generating an iframe and reacting on its onLoad event helps here.

hope that helps,
Samuel