adding elements to form

when we create form element through zend command. it creates the necessary class and extend from Zend_Form. in the init() method when call the $this variable to refer to the form that we have created.

$this

this refers to the class we are in. so if we are in the form class that we have created and we call $this  we will be referring to the class we are in. so in zend we can call any function or method of Zend_Form through through $this->{method name}.

in the similar way we can call other methods if we are in other classes that extends any other Zend Class.

adding elements and attributes to form

$this->setAction('index/users') and $this->setMethod('post')  method will will set the action and method attributes of the form. this will set the form like;

<form action="index/user" method="POST"></form>

$this->{variable name} is use to define a variable. 

Zend provide us with the functionality to create forms elements like text field, password, check boxes, drop down menu etc. 

creating text field.

$this->name = new Zend_form_element_text('{name of text field}');

$this->name = new Zend_form_element_text('Name');

 this will create text element like that;

<input type="text" name="Name" />

creating password field.

$this->name = new Zend_form_element_password('{name of text field}');

$this->name = new Zend_form_element_password('passwordfield');

<input type="password" name="passwordfield" />

creating a checkbox

$this->checkbox = new Zend_form_element_checkbox({name of checkbox},{other options});

$this->checkbox = new Zend_form_element_checkbox('checkbox',array( 'label' => 'mylabel', 'name' => 'myname', 'checkedValue' => 'value1', 'uncheckedValue' => 'value2' ));

<dd id="myname-element">

<input type="hidden" name="myname" value="value2"><input type="checkbox" name="myname" id="myname" value="value1"></dd>

for multiple checkbox we use other method that is;

multiple checkbox creation;

$this->multi = new Zend_Form_Element_MultiCheckbox('name',array(

                'label' => 'mylabel',

               'multiOptions'=>array(

                'student'=>'students',

                'teacher'=>'Teacher',

                'employee'=>'Employee'

                )

        ));

<dd id="name-element">

<label><input type="checkbox" name="name[]" id="name-student" value="student">students</label><br><label><input type="checkbox" name="name[]" id="name-teacher" value="teacher">Teacher</label><br><label><input type="checkbox" name="name[]" id="name-employee" value="employee">Employee</label></dd>

this default styles of the multi-checkboxes are not good, we have to set decorators, we will we Decorators in zend framework later.

Radio Buttons

$this->multi = new Zend_Form_Element_Radio('radio',array(

                'label' => 'mylabel',

               'multiOptions'=>array(

                'student'=>'students',

                'teacher'=>'Teacher',

                'employee'=>'Employee'

                )

        ));

<dd id="radio-element">

<label><input type="radio" name="radio" id="radio-student" value="student">students</label><br><label><input type="radio" name="radio" id="radio-teacher" value="teacher">Teacher</label><br><label><input type="radio" name="radio" id="radio-employee" value="employee">Employee</label></dd>

Select elements

$this->multi = new Zend_Form_Element_Select('select',array(

                'label' => 'mylabel',

               'multiOptions'=>array(

                'student'=>'students',

                'teacher'=>'Teacher',

                'employee'=>'Employee'

                )

        ));

<select name="select" id="select">

    <option value="student">students</option>

    <option value="teacher">Teacher</option>

    <option value="employee">Employee</option>

</select>

Setting labels to the elements;

Adding elements in zend is easy and adding labels to these element almost same for every element. every zend element has a method known as setLabel({name of label });. with that element we can set any element with a label for it. for example if we want to set the label for the name textfield we will set like that;

$this->name->setLabel("Name of Text");

for password ;

$this->password->setLabel("Enter your password");

and so on.

Validation in Zend

A form element can be validated either by passing the validate  value or by passing Zend_validate_* object. like for alphabets validation we can either pass 'alpha' or Zend_validate_alpha to the addValidator method.

adding validation to text field can be like that;

$this->name->addValidator('alpha'); or 

$this->name->addValidator(new Zend_Validate_Alpha);

or if we want to validate the password field only to the alpha-numeric value we can do that as

$this->password->addValidator('alnum');

or 

$this->passworld->addValidator(new Zend_Validate_Alnum);

and when we add something other than alph-numeric to the password field we will be given error saying that this field can only be alph-numeric.