[Typo3-dev] RFC Forms, validation, etc. in 5.0

[dan frost]

I fully agree.

I think that the validator shouldn't be a class, 
but a pattern that allows extensions to add new 
ways of validating.

dan

Michael Scharkow wrote:
> Hi *,
> 
> as Sebastian Kurfürst just proposed a refurbished evaluation API for 
> TYPO3, I'm jumping in here and propose some bigger changes for T3 5.0:
> 
> Problem: TCEMAIN is HUGE and difficult to maintain, as is TCEFORMS. 
> Forms in the BE are manually created everywhere, validation both in 
> Browser (via JS) and in TCEMAIN (when CRUD ing table rows) is difficult.
> 
> Solution: Large refactoring and more MVC and DRY (yes, I did a lot of 
> Rails recently).
> 
> 1. Create class.t3_forms to create a simple but flexible API for 
> creating *all* kinds of forms, input fields and stuff. Basically 
> implement PEAR:HTML_Quickform which we can't use for license issues and 
> because it's not flexible enough IMHO. This will be a rather low-level 
> API to be used both in BE and FE.
> 
> 2. Create a class that renders our data models (=$TCA, because that is 
> exactly what $TCA defines) into forms, complete with validation and all. 
> We can draw on TCEFORMS for that (and there's also a dozen FE extensions 
> which do this) but use t3_forms classes for actual rendering in order to 
> remove *all* HTML form that code.
> 
> 3. Validation of data is done with a dedicated t3_validate library that 
> can be accessed directly through a PHP API *and* via AJAX. This enables 
> us to get rid of most JS currently used for evaluation and have nice, 
> slim forms as seen in 
> http://particletree.com/features/degradable-ajax-form-validation/
> 
> 4. Finally, use TCEMAIN only for actual data manipulation, like new, 
> copy, move, etc. If we have a clean API for that, we can juggle with 
> data from outside the BE.
> 
> 
> I am currently working on (1) because the other tasks depend on that. 
> But since I know a lot of development is going on in hiding in TYPO3, 
> I'd like to ask if people here are working on this already, or are 
> interested in making this happen, or think these ideas are complete 
> bull... I'd rather know this before starting such a project ;)
> 
> Greetings,
> Michael
> 
> PS: Kasper, those backend forms and wizards are *really* hardcore code, 
> respect! :)