konsulting/form

HTML form builder

Form Builder

A library to simplify form building in php applications. It uses a template approach, supplied by Plates. It is inspired by the Laravel Collective Form library and a previous generations of form builder developed by Konsulting., _(*1)

You can use the library in any PHP project, but we have included some helpers for usage within a Laravel Project., _(*2)

Documentation is still being developed, so please bear with us., _(*3)

Installation

We recommend using composer to install the library., _(*4)

composer require konsulting/form-builder, _(*5)

Usage with Laravel

The package will auto-register the Service Provider and Facade in Laravel 5.5+. In earlier versions of Laravel, you will need to manually register them yourself in your config/app.php., _(*6)

"providers" => [
    ...
    "Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Laravel\\FormBuilderServiceProvider"
],

"aliases" => [
    ...
    "Form" => "Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Laravel\\FormBuilderFacade"
]

You will then be able to access the FormBuilder instance though the Facade in your views (or anywhere else you need to)., _(*7)

// For example
Form::text('name', $yourName)->withLabel('Your Name')

Usage outside Laravel

To begin using the form builder, you need to construct it using the Plates Engine (which essentially tells it which templates to use) and a class resolver (which effectively tells the build where to look for each form elements' class)., _(*8)

    use League\Plates\Engine;
    use Konsulting\FormBuilder\FormBuilder;
    use Konsulting\FormBuilder\ClassResolver;

    //...

    $builder = new FormBuilder(
        new Engine(__DIR__ . '/../../vendor/konsulting/form-builder/partials/bootstrap3'),
        new ClassResolver('Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Elements\\')
    );

There is a simple API to build up your form elements. Each element shares a set of common methods, and we have set up the base set of html form elements., _(*9)

Shared methods

Setting attributes

• withLabel(label) and withoutLabel
• withError(message) and withoutError
• withFeedback(type, message) and withoutFeedback
• withHelp(message)
• withAddon(content, position=before|after) - specific addon to the input (e.g. calendar icon to the right of an input box)
• prepend(content) - place content before the whole html block
• append(content) - place content after the whole html block
• withAttributes(['name' => value, ...]) - set a range of attributes, or those without specific setters

Retrieving attributes

• attributes([array_of_keys_wanted])
• attributesExcept([array_of_keys_to_exclude])

Form Elements

• input(type, name, value)
• checkbox(name, value)
• radio(name, value)
• select(name, options, selected)
• textarea(name, value)
• date(name, value)
• time(name, value)
• datetime(name, value)

Dates and time

Dates and time have an additional method, split(), which is used to generate input boxes that are split into each component of the date/time. There is a DateTimeFormats helper class, which is used to set the formats for user input/display and for persistence., _(*10)

The helper also contains functions used to help split the date into components or re-combine it based on the settings., _(*11)

When using the split() method, your dates and times will need to be recombined when validating them, for example., _(*12)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and will be fully credited. We will accept contributions by Pull Request., _(*13)

Please:, _(*14)

• Use the PSR-2 Coding Standard
• Add tests, if you’re not sure how, please ask.
• Document changes in behaviour, including readme.md.

Testing

We use PHPUnit for this package., _(*15)

Run tests using PHPUnit: vendor/bin/phpunit, _(*16)