[Typo3-dev] FORMidable front end forms : please help us improve !

[Jerome]

"Michael Scharkow" wrote:

> Hi Jerome,
>
> this looks very nice, and it *could* be the base of a new general formlib 
> (so I have less typing to do ;). But some questions first:
>
> 1. You don't happen to have a stripped-down version of the actual php 
> files (without all the mod/pi1/emconf-stuff? It's just too many files to
> glance over...
>

Hi michael
It was a choice we made at the beginning of the project. Because, for 
flexibility reasons, we wanted Renderlets, DataHandlers, ... , to be shaped 
like 'plugins' of the main API. So we decided to develop them as extensions, 
with dependancies to the main API ameos_formidable.
But there is a problem, indeed. It creates a buch of files for each 
renderlet, datahandler, ... and each one had to be installed separately in 
the ext manager, as TER1 do not support "Download this ext and all 
dependancies". So we decided to offer a Backend interface for formidable 
management. During the install phase, this interface installs all the 
'standard' plugin extensions of formidable : renderlet TEXT, renderlet 
LISTBOX, Datahandler TEMPLATE, ...

But if you have you an idea on how to allow such flexibilty without using a 
separate extension for each formidable plugin, we will hapily change this :) 
!!
Maybe something that installs just the class file into the main extension 
ameos_formidable. I don't know what would be the Typo3 way for doing this.


> 2. Why only frontend?
In fact, I guess formidable could be as well used in the backend with minor 
changes, because it doesn't uses specific typo3 frontend libraries. Except 
that we made it a Frontend plugin. But, again, this would really have to be 
changed.
Do you think formidable BE forms could be useful as well ?

> 3. Did you try to implement $TCA-like configuration when implementing the 
> XML stuff? How much effort would it take to exchange your XML config with 
> standard $TCA?
No, we didn't tried. I think that it would take much deep TCA knowledge, but 
implementation would not be really hard. Xpaths calls to the _navConf() 
method would have to be changed. Maybe some standard renderlets and 
validators, too. But nothing scarrying. :D




> 4. Did I overlook the textarea type?
>
No, you didn't :) We didn't implemented it as we never needed it for the 
moment. This could easily be done by creating a new renderlet TEXTAREA, 
copy/pasted from the TEXT renderlet, with minor changes.

> All in all, a very nice job. I think I will play with this for a while.
Thank you
If you're interested in being part of the formidable development team, 
you're welcome :D
Just let us now.

> Greetings,
> Michael