Page 493 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Chapter 15: Making Your Job Easier with PEAR
Web Forms the Easy Way with

HTML_QuickForm

Just as HTML_Table lets you create HTML tables programmatically — thereby making your code clean
and flexible — the HTML_QuickForm package provides a class for creating Web forms without needing
to include a single line of HTML in your scripts. What ’ s more, HTML_QuickForm can process the forms it
creates, relieving you of the burden of writing (and testing) your own validation, filtering, and error -
reporting code.

In the following sections you take a brief look at the functionality available in the HTML_QuickForm
package, and then you create a membership form script using the power of HTML_QuickForm .

Installing HTML_QuickForm

Installation of HTML_QuickForm is much as you ’ d expect. On Ubuntu, for example, just run pear
install - - alldeps HTML_QuickForm :

$ pear install --alldeps HTML_QuickForm
downloading HTML_QuickForm-3.2.10.tgz ...
Starting to download HTML_QuickForm-3.2.10.tgz (101,851 bytes)
.......................done: 101,851 bytes
downloading HTML_Common-1.2.4.tgz ...
Starting to download HTML_Common-1.2.4.tgz (4,519 bytes)
...done: 4,519 bytes
install ok: channel://pear.php.net/HTML_Common-1.2.4
install ok: channel://pear.php.net/HTML_QuickForm-3.2.10

$
Once installed, you should find that there are some example scripts in the doc/HTML_QuickForm/docs/
folder inside your PEAR folder. You can also read the full documentation for HTML_QuickForm at
http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.html.html-quickform.php .

Working with HTML_QuickForm
To use HTML_QuickForm , you first create a new HTML_QuickForm object, and then call various methods to
add elements — such as fields and labels — to the form. You can also add validation rules to make sure
that the data entered for each field is correct, and filters to remove unacceptable data from each field. You
can then call various methods to validate the form, process the form, or display the form in the page
(including any error messages to display to the user).

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