PHP form class

Question

I'm used to ASPNET and Django's methods of doing forms: nice object-orientated handlers, where you can specify regexes for validation and do everything in a very simple way.

After months living happily without it, I've had to come back to PHP for a project and noticed that everything I used to do with PHP forms (manual output, manual validation, extreme pain) was utter rubbish.

Is there a nice, simple and free class that does form generation and validation like it should be done?

Clonefish has the right idea, but it's way off on the price tag.

Answer 1

I have recently used the project listed above - http://code.google.com/p/php-form-builder-class/ - in development and noticed that the latest release (version 1.0.3) replaces the table markup with a more flexible div layout that can be easily styled to render forms however you'd like. There are many examples that can help you get started quickly.

I would recommend this project.

Answer 2

Here's another free alternative:

http://code.google.com/p/php-form-builder-class/

It lets you create a form with code like:

include("../class.form.php5");

$form = new form("form_elements");

$form->addHidden("cmd", "submit");
$form->addTextbox("Textbox:", "field0");
$form->addTextarea("Textarea:", "field1");

$form->render();

Pros:

• Built in form validation (PHP and javascript)
• Comes out of the box with integrations with jQuery UI, CKEditor/TinyMCE, Google Maps, tool tips, etc.
• Really easy to get up and running and creating powerful forms

Cons, which eventually kept me from using it:

• No fine grain control of form output. You can either render the whole form as a table or nothing.
• No fieldsets

It's looks to be under active development, so might be worth keeping an eye out for future versions/improvements.