[TYPO3-dev] future of FORM

[Reinhard Führicht]

Am 2010-08-26 09:50, schrieb Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]:
> Reinhard Führicht schrieb am 25.08.2010 19:35:
>
>>> Thank you for the insight - i would appreciate if the project would go
>>> on and i'm still very interested in a solution to easily manage forms.
>>> Reinhard - leader of formhandler-project - once wrote me (sorry for
>>> quoting without asking):
>>> "IMHO the most reasonable was, if all developers working on something
>>> with forms in TYPO3, would come together and negotiate a single core
>>> extension that provides the basic functionality and a good API for
>>> advanced needs. If we could get that there would be no need for so much
>>> people worrying about one and the same problem and we finally had a form
>>> handler thats fast, stable and powerfull." (Translated from german)
>>> +2
>>> Cheers,
>>> Christian
>>
>> Thanks for reminding me about that. I really wanted to get in touch with
>> all the form extension authors, but I somehow got busy and forgot about it.
>> I talked to Patrick during the t3dd09 about providing error checks and
>> utility function in core to be used in form handling extensions, but
>> this came to nothing too somehow.
>> It would be really cool to team up and try to provide at least some
>> useful error checks in core. The new FORM object needs them, Formhandler
>> needs them, Powermail needs them and any other form extension too.
>
> That might be a good candidate for a start to get stuff in small steps
> into the core (in 4.5). Can you ellaborate a bit more on what you mean
> with "error checks" and "utility functions"?
>
> Cheers,
> Ernesto

Hi Ernesto,

what I have in mind is something like this:
The core could provide separate error check classes to be used in 
extensions and in the core itself.

Example:

class errorcheck_integer extends absctract_errorcheck {

   public function check($value) {
     return t3lib_div::testInt($value);
   }

}

That would be a very simple error check, but there could be many more.

Like:

class errorcheck_indbtable extends absctract_errorcheck {

   public function check($value, $settings = array()) {

   }

}

$settings may consist of the table and field to check.
The important thing is: An error check returns true/false and takes a 
value and a setting array as arguments. In my opinion, such error checks 
can be used easily in other extensions.

Utility classes are more difficult to explain. Examples would be
- a usable and fully configurable mailer engine (e.g. using swiftmailer 
http://swiftmailer.org/)
- a method like "getCSV($data)" which converts a multidimensional array 
into a CSV string. (I know there is a method in t3lib_div, but it 
doesn't work well)
- I know this topic is very difficult, but it would be so important to 
have some kind of semi-automatic GET/POST sanitizing. Maybe like this:

$gpVars = t3lib_sanitizing::sanitizeForDB($gpVars);
$gpVars = t3lib_sanitizing::sanitizeForHTML($gpVars);

- A unified form submission log, where any form extension can write 
into. The form submission log could provide a backend module for 
overview, filtering and exporting the submitted data. Kind of like the 
Formhandler backend log, but more beautiful and - as said - unified 
(maybe like devlog).


Maybe there are many more useful methods that could be implemented, but 
this are a few thoughts I have in mind.

I am looking forward to any thoughts on this topic and I am willing to 
participate in implementing this.

Regards,
Reinhard