Section: Displaying a form in a template
| « Initializing a form | ^ jForms: automatic forms | Using a form after a submit » |
− Table of content
To display a form and its data, you could call getAllData on your form object and assign its returned array to a template. With it, you'll be able to generate your HTML form along with its data. if you want to display input errors, call getErrors to retrieve them and again display them as you like in your template.
However there are some template plugins in Jelix, to prevent you from doing this long and sometimes boring task. They even do a lot more:
- display each control field as described in your XML form,
- display each control label in <label> tag to improve ergonomy and accessibility,
- display error messages,
- display help messages,
- generate javascript for client-side checking before posting data,
- valid HTML generated and good support of accessibility,
- ids and classes on elements to ease styling.
Full automatic form display with formfull ¶
For you in a hurry, this template plugin will fully display your form. Its name: formfull. With it, you won't control how each field, labels and submits are displayed. Still you can customize display of help and error messages (see further).
here are its arguments :
- your form object
- a selector specifying the target action
- optional : extra url parameters (other than fields data)
Example in your controller :
$form = jForms::get('myform');
$tpl = new jTpl();
$tpl->assign('form', $form);
And in your template :
<h1>My form</h1>
<p>Fill this form :</p>
{formfull $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
Labels and control fields will be displayed in a table, and submit buttons in a div below.
Customized display ¶
There is not only formfull. Other plugins exist to control how your form is displayed and precisely in which markup your form controls are wrapped.
The first one form is the equivalent to formfull except that its a block plugin. it means that it has an end tag and should contains other plugins and markup controlling the display of your form.
Simple display ¶
- *formcontrols plugins loops on form controls (neither submits nor reset). It is a block plugin. Within it, ctrl_label and ctrl_control** plugins will display respectively label and field of current control. To display submit buttons or reset, use formsubmit and formreset.
Example :
{form $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
<fieldset><legend>Fill : </legend>
{formcontrols}
<p> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
<div> {formreset}{formsubmit} </div>
{/form}
Note that form fields will be displayed in the order of their declaration in your XML file. Note also that template here is totally independent of form content and could be reused with more forms.
Advanced display ¶
Some controls need to be displayed differently.
To achieve this, you can use ifctrl inside formcontrols. its argument is a list of control names.
The code below adds a class on 'name' control only :
{form $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
<fieldset><legend>Your identtity : </legend>
{formcontrols}
<p {ifctrl 'name'}class="help-needed"{/if}> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
Or else, indicate a list of control names to formcontrols plugin. It will loop only on those controls.
{form $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
<fieldset><legend>Identity : </legend>
{formcontrols array('lastname','firstname','address')}
<p> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
<fieldset><legend>Other fields : </legend>
{formcontrols}
<p> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
<div> {formsubmit} </div>
{/form}
Above, we display a series of controls in a first fieldset (lastname, firstname and address) and the others in a second fieldset:formcontrols loops over controls not already displayed.
Note that ctrl_label and ctrl_control also function outside of formcontrols. In that case, you should indicate a control name.
{form $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
<fieldset><legend>Identity : </legend>
<table>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'lastname'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'lastname'}</td> </tr>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'firstname'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'firstname'}</td></tr>
</table>
</fieldset>
<fieldset><legend>Other fields : </legend>
{formcontrols}
<p> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
<div> {formsubmit} </div>
{/form}
Lastname and firstname fields are displayed precisely in a table whereas other fields are displayed with formcontrols.
Customizing display of password controls ¶
Beware that if a password control defines a confirm field (<confirm> tag in XML) you should control either the display of password field and confirm field. the confirm control name is a concatenation of password control name + _confirm.
See example below:
{form $form, 'mymodule~default:save'}
<fieldset><legend>Account creation : </legend>
<table>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'login'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'login'}</td> </tr>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'password'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'password'}</td></tr>
</table>
</fieldset>
<fieldset><legend>Other infos : </legend>
{formcontrols}
<p> {ctrl_label} : {ctrl_control} </p>
{/formcontrols}
</fieldset>
<div> {formsubmit} </div>
{/form}
Confirm field will appear in the second fieldset and not near password field in the example above. To do so, just display 'password_confirm' in a row below 'password' :
<table>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'login'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'login'}</td> </tr>
<tr><td>{ctrl_label 'password'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'password'}</td></tr> <tr><td>{ctrl_label 'password_confirm'}</td><td>{ctrl_control 'password_confirm'}</td></tr>
</table>
On the contrary, you should not take care of confirm field in formcontrols loop.
Customizing display of submit buttons ¶
As you may recall, formsubmit template plugin displays a submit button declared in your form. But if one declares more than one submit button, formsubmit will display only the first one. In that case, use formsubmits (note the ending s). This block template loops over submit buttons :
<ul>
{formsubmits}
<li>{formsubmit}</li>
{/formsubmits}
</ul>
Another way is to use formsubmit multiple times indicating each submit name :
<div> {formsubmit 'preview'} {formsubmit 'save'} </div>
- *Beware : {formsubmits} loops over submit controls, not submit items** ! It is not possible to loop over submit items (see ticket #429)
Generator choice ¶
jForms template plugins relies on other plugins. Those are jForms plugins and generate effectively a form content (label and fields markup). These are called generators. Jelix 1.1 packages have two of them inside : htm and htmllight. See documentation to create your own if you need to display custom markup. If you need a generator supporting a javascript library as extjs, or an ajax form, or a XUL form...
Jelix default generator is html. You can change this in your configuration file. Use defaultJformsBuild variable and assign it your generator of choice :
[tplplugins]
defaultJformsBuilder = myformbuilder
To achieve a fine-grained control, you can even choose a generator in {form} ou {formfull} (as fourth argument) :
{formfull $form, 'mymodule~default:save', array(), 'htmllight'}
Note 1: Those plugins support a fifth parameter which is an array of options passed to the generator (errorDecorator and helpDecorator for 'html' and htmllight').
Note 2: You can of course create a new generator as inheriting from an existing one. That way, you can customize only some of the output or set an option directly in its constructor. ...
More about generators :
