[TYPO3-ect] Again: Forms library

[Jerome Schneider]

Hi there,


Day-to-day SVN updates for project-formidable are available at [1]
along with simple samples and links to doc.

Documentation wiki [2] is kept up-to-date, but large new sections are 
really roughly documented, extracts from SVN changelog.

TER version of project formidable (0.7.0) is out-of-date, and we're 
planning to release a 0.8.0 within weeks.

Current SVN version is 0.7.131

I Hope we'll be able to help the community for the forms lib.

[1]: http://www.ameos.com/formidable
[2]: http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Formidable

--

Jerome Schneider
Formidable-project for TYPO3

Elmar Hinz a écrit :
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>