Form Generator Sprinkle for UserFrosting 4

This Sprinkle provides helper classes, Twig template and javascript plugins to generate HTML forms, modals and confirm modal bases on UserFrosting/validation schemas.

Install

cd into the sprinkle directory of UserFrosting and clone as submodule:

git submodule add git@github.com:lcharette/UF_FormGenerator.git FormGenerator

Add to the sprinkle list

Edit UserFrosting app/sprinkles/sprinkles.json file and add FormGenerator to the sprinkle list to enable it.

Update the assets build & composer

From the UserFrosting /build folder, run npm run uf-assets-install You may also need to run composer update from the app/ folder.

Features and usage

Before starting with UfFormGenerator, you should read the main UserFrosting guide to familiarise yourself with validation schemas: (https://learn.userfrosting.com/routes-and-controllers/client-input/validation).

Form generation

Defining the fields in the schema

This sprinkle uses the schemas used by UserFrosting to validate form data to actually build form. To acheive this, a new form key is simply added to the fields found in a schema file. Let's skip the boring text and dive into an example.

Here's a simple schema used to validate a form used to create a project. The form will contain a name, description and status fields.

{
    "name" : {
        "validators" : {
            "length" : {
                "min" : 1,
                "max" : 100
            },
            "required" : {
                "message" : "PROJECT.VALIDATE.REQUIRED_NAME"
            }
        }
    },
    "description" : {
        "validators" : {}
    },
    "status" : {
        "validators" : {
            "member_of" : {
                "values" : [
                    "0", "1"
                ]
            },
            "required" : {
                "message" : "PROJECT.VALIDATE.STATUS"
            }
        }
    }
}

At this point, with typical UserFrosting (or any framework) setup, you would be diving into your controller and twig files to manually create your html form. This can be easy if you have a handful of fields, but can be a pain with a dozen of fields and more.

This is where FormGenerator steps in with the use of a new form attribute. Let's add it to our project form :

{
    "name" : {
        "validators" : {
            "length" : {
                "min" : 1,
                "max" : 100
            },
            "required" : {
                "message" : "VALIDATE.REQUIRED_NAME"
            }
        },
        "form" : {
            "type" : "text",
            "label" : "NAME",
            "icon" : "fa-flag",
            "placeholder" : "NAME"
        }
    },
    "description" : {
        "validators" : {},
        "form" : {
            "type" : "textarea",
            "label" : "DESCRIPTION",
            "icon" : "fa-pencil",
            "placeholder" : "DESCRIPTION",
            "rows" : 5
        }
    },
    "status" : {
        "validators" : {
            "member_of" : {
                "values" : [
                    "0", "1"
                ]
            },
            "required" : {
                "message" : "VALIDATE.STATUS"
            }
        },
        "form" : {
            "type" : "select",
            "label" : "STATUS",
            "options" : {
                "0" : "Active",
                "1" : "Disabled"
            }
        }
    }
}

Let's look closer at the name field :

"form" : {
    "type" : "text",
    "label" : "PROJECT.NAME",
    "icon" : "fa-flag",
    "placeholder" : "PROJECT.NAME"
}

Here you can see that we define the type, label, icon and placeholder value for this name field. You can define any standard form attributes plus the icon and label.

Currently, the following form element are implemented:

• input
• textarea
• select
• bool (checkbox)
• number

For the select element, a special options attribute containing an array of an array of key : value can be used to define the

Of course, all strings can be defined using translation keys.

The controller part

Once your fields defined in the schema json file, you need to load that schema in your controller.

First thing to do is add FormGenerator's 'RequestSchema' class name space. If you already have the Forstress one, it should be changed to FormGenerator one.

Find that line: use UserFrosting\Fortress\RequestSchema;

And replace it with : use UserFrosting\Sprinkle\FormGenerator\RequestSchema;

If you can't find the line, just add the above to the top of your controller with the other use block.

Next, you should load the schema and setup the validator the same way you would do with the Fortress class:

// Load validator rules
$schema = new RequestSchema("schema://project.json");
$validator = new JqueryValidationAdapter($schema, $this->ci->translator);

It's now time to generate our fields!

// Generate the form
$schema->initForm($project);

In this example, $project can contain the default (or current value) of the fields. A data collection fetched from the database with eloquent can also be passed directly.

Last thing to do is send the fields to Twig. In the retuend var to the template, add this:

$this->ci->view->render($response, "pages/myPage.html.twig", [
    "fields" => $schema->generateForm(),
    "validators" => $validator->rules()
]);

The Twig template part

Now it's time to display the form in myPage.html.twig !

<form name="ModalFormGenerator" method="post" action="/Path/to/Controller/Handling/Form">
    {% include "components/csrf.html.twig" %}
    <div id="form-alerts"></div>
    <div class="row">
    	<div class="col-sm-8">
		    {% include 'FormGenerator/FormGenerator.html.twig' %}
    	</div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
      <button type="submit" class="btn btn-block btn-lg btn-success">Submit</button>
    </div>
</form>

That's all! No need to list all the field manually. The one defined in the fields var will be displayed by FormGenerator/FormGenerator.html.twig. Note that this will only load the fields, not the form itself. The <form> tag and submit button need to be added manually.

Modal form

What if you want to show a form in a modal window? Well, it's even easier! It's basically three steps:

1. Setup your form schema (described above)
2. Setup the form in your controller
3. Call the modal from your template

Setup the form in your controller

With your schema in hand, it's time to create a controller and route to load your modal. The controller code will be like the above with one exception: the render part. Example time!

$this->ci->view->render($response, "FormGenerator/modal.html.twig", [
    "box_id" => $get['box_id'],
    "box_title" => "PROJECT.CREATE",
    "submit_button" => "CREATE",
    "form_action" => '/project/create',
    "fields" => $schema->generateForm(),
    "validators" => $validator->rules()
]);

As you can see, instead of rendering your own Twig template, you simply have to specify FormGenerator's modal template. This template requires the following variables:

1. box_id: This should always be $get['box_id']. This is used by the javascript code to actually display the modal.
2. box_title: The title of the modal.
3. submit_button: The label of the submit button. Optional. Default to SUBMIT (localized).
4. form_action: The route where the form will be sent
5. fields: The fields. Should always be $schema->generateForm()
6. validators: Client side validators

Call the modal from your template

So at this point you have a controller that display the modal at a /path/to/controller route. Time to show that modal. Again, two steps:

First, define a link or a button that will call the modal when clicked:

<button class="btn btn-success js-displayForm" data-toggle="modal" data-formUrl="/path/to/controller">Create</button>

The important part here is the data-formUrl attribute. This is the route that will load your form. js-displayForm is used here to

Second, load the javascript. Add this to your Twig file:

{% block scripts_page %}

    <!-- Include page-specific JS -->
    {{ assets.js('js/FormGenerator') | raw }}

    <script>
        $(".js-displayForm").formGenerator();
    </script>
{% endblock %}

The js-displayForm class is used to apply the formGenerator plugin to all button containing the js-displayForm class.

Modal confirmation

One side feature of FormGenerator is the ability to add a confirmation modal to your pages with simple html5 attributes.

Let's look at a delete button / confirmation for our project :

<a href="#" class="btn btn-danger js-displayConfirm"
  data-confirm-title="Delete project ?"
  data-confirm-message="Are your sure you want to delete this project?"
  data-confirm-button="Yes, delete project"
  data-post-url="/porject/delete"
data-toggle="modal"><i class="fa fa-trash-o"></i> Delete</a>

(Note that content of data attributes can be translation keys)

Now simply add the javascript function and add it to your button, using the js-displayConfirm class:

{% block scripts_page %}

    <!-- Include page-specific JS -->
    {{ assets.js('js/FormGenerator') | raw }}

    <script>
        $(".js-displayConfirm").formGenerator('confirm');
    </script>
{% endblock %}

Working example

See the UF_FormGeneratorExample repo for an example of the FormGenerator full code.

Overwriting template/style

!TODO

Licence

By Louis Charette. Copyright (c) 2016, free to use in personal and commercial software as per the MIT license.