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What is automatic form generation and validation |
| generates default forms from specs from the class of objects that is edited, and validates the values that are submitted |
Rapid Application Development tools have traditionally contained a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to place user interface components on a window, which are later reprocuced in the running application. In its simpelest version the components had to filled with data from event handling scripts. In its more advanced form data bound widgets could do this automatically and convert the input back to the datatypes as defined in the table design and validate it against contraints also defined in the table desing.
PhpPeanuts has no WYSYWIG editor for building web pages. You may use one of your choice, but you can't drag and drop phpPeanuts' page parts onto the canvas. Instead we generate the forms automatically. This makes the first prototype be built even faster then with traditional RAD. The technique is similar to data binding, except that we bind to objects, not to database records. What is in the forms depends on meta data, i.e. the design of the classes of the objects the forms are bound to. See the tutorial chapter 4, Meta data for the user interface.
PhpPeanuts can also convert and validate data from the submitted form against the meta data. This means that if for example for a property 'number' is specified as its type, the local number formatted string that a user has typed is converted to an integer or float, and it is checked to be above the miniumum value and below the maximum value. See how to convert and validate user input.
Of course automatically generated forms can in the long term not meet your design requirements. Therefore we included an option to generate a template that you can edit manually or with a WYSIWYG editor. For how to do that see How to specialize the layout of a DetailsPage. |
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