[TYPO3-ect] Again: Forms library

[Simon Tuck]

Elmar Hinz wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> time to reopen this theme.
> 
> Do you sometimes wonder, why there isn't a really good forms library
> available for PHP, although PHP is that many years old by now? I often do. 
> 
> Google.com gives me an ECTs wiki page as 5th result for the search "php
> forms library". No joke. That is funny and sad at the same time. Other
> languages overtake right and left. Just think of the modern JavaScript
> frameworks. 
> 
> Is it that difficult to write a forms library? I don't think so. Kasper
> wrote 2 of them. One for the BE, the TCE Forms, but they are not usable for
> FE plugins. The second, the TS forms, are for the FE, but they are not
> object orientated, so that the are unflexible in the field of plugin
> development.
> 
> The core team modernizes the forms element by now. Who knows details? Will
> it be object orientated?
> 
> I meanwhile have made up my own vision of a forms library. It  should be
> useful inside and outside TYPO3. There would be an object tree that
> represents the forms structure and data, but no rendering data at all. The
> rendering would be the task of independent renderers. (It could be
> orientated on the XFORMS specification).
> 
> Because it doesn't contain rendering informations, it is rather simple to
> code. The second advantage is, that you could choice between different
> tools, to output the form to differnt formats.
> 
> Also the construction would be simple. It would be generated from a
> typoScript or XML setup. Finally the population with data is straight away.
> The data finds it's places by the name/id that every form element has. You
> don't have to fiddle with the structure of the tree at all. It would simply
> take an array or object like piVars. 
> 
> To summarize: 
> 
> The usage has three steps:
> 
> 1.) Automatic tree object tree creation: 
> 
>   From a setup with TS or XML or PHP array. Could evalute the TCA.
>   It's a real object tree that can be extended, processed etc. 
> 
> 2.) Populating the tree with data:
> 
>   Array or object with id/names as index.
> 
> 3.) Rendering the tree to output:
> 
>    Could be simply rendered to a form as a whole.
>    Could be placed piecewise by ids into templates like smarty.
> 
> What do you think about? Does anybody take up the spark to light a firework?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Elmar
> 
> 

Hi Elmar,
I have on occasion used the pear quickforms library. In combination with 
Smarty it is a comfortable solution, because it will render directly to 
Smarty (it works w/o Smarty as well of course). In this context I have a 
patchwork of classes and methods (nothing I'd call mature) which 
translate TCA configurations into quickform and allow additional 
configuration via TS. So my question is, what's the general opinion on 
the PEAR quickform library?
Cheers,
Simon