Lesson 15 - Form framework for PHP - Testing and finishing the form

In the last lesson, Form framework in PHP - Finishing the basic concept, we finished the base of the form framework. In today's tutorial, we'll test it all out and extend it with methods for saving and retrieving data.

Testing

Let's test the form out on the same example from when we tested the InputBox. Thanks to the form framework, we are now able to reduce the amount of code significantly. We're able to get the same results with the following bit of code:

$form = new Form('test-form');
$form->addTextBox('name', 'Name', true)
     ->addMinLengthRule(3);
$form->addEmailBox('email', 'Email', true)
     ->setText('@');
$form->addPasswordBox('password', 'Password');
$form->addTextBox('social_security_number', 'Social security number')
     ->addPatternRule('[0-9]{6}\/[0-9]{4}');
$form->addButton('send', 'Send');

I added text to the email field just to show the setText() method in action (the "@" sign really doesn't have to be there).

Next, we'll render the form by calling the render() method:

<?= $form->render() ?>

The result is very impressive:

Here's what it looks like when we narrow the window to the size of a cell phone screen:

We'll test the server-side validations at the end of the lesson.

Retrieving data and filling data in

Filling the form in or retrieving its data manually is absolutely pointless and laborious work, which can be fully automatized.

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