Form Field Decorators

Agile UI dedicates a separate namespace for the Form Field Decorator. Those are quite simple components that present themselves as input controls: line, select, checkbox.

Relationship with Form

All Field Decorators can be integrated with atk4uiForm which will facilitate collection and processing of data in a form. Field decorators can also be used as stand-alone controls.

Stand-alone use

atk4\ui\FormField\set()
atk4\ui\FormField\jsInput()

Add any field decorator to your application like this:

$field = $app->add(new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line());

You can set default value and ineract with a field using JavaScript:

$field->set('hello world');


$button = $app->add(['Button', 'check value']);
$button->on('click', new \atk4\ui\jsExpression('alert("field value is: "+[])', [$field->jsInput()->val()]));

When used stand-alone, FormFields will produce a basic HTML (I have omitted id=):

<div class="ui  input">
    <input name="line" type="text" placeholder="" value="hello world"/>
</div>

Using in-form

Field can also be used inside a form like this:

$form = $app->add('Form');
$field = $form->addField('name', new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line());

If you execute this exmple, you’ll notice that Feld now has a label, it uses full width of the page and the following HTML is now produced:

<div class="field">
  <label for="atk_admin_form_generic_name_input">Name</label>
  <div id="atk_admin_form_generic_name" class="ui input" style="">
    <input name="name" type="text" placeholder="" id="atk_admin_form_generic_name_input" value="">
  </div>
</div>

The markup that surronds the button which includes Label and formatting is produced by atk4uiFormLayoutGeneric, which does draw some of the information from the Field itself.

Using in Form Layouts

Form may have multiple Form Layouts and that’s very useful if you need to split up form into multiple Tabs or detach field groups or even create nested layouts:

$form = $app->add('Form');
$tabs = $form->add('Tabs', 'AboveFields');
$form->add(['ui'=>'divider'], 'AboveFields');

$form_page = $tabs->addTab('Basic Info')->add(['FormLayout\Generic', 'form'=>$form]);
$form_page->addField('name', new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line());

$form_page = $tabs->addTab('Other Info')->add(['FormLayout\Generic', 'form'=>$form]);
$form_page->addField('age', new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line());

$form->onSubmit(function($f) {  return $f->model['name'].' has age '.$f->model['age']; });

This is further explained in documentation for atk4uiFormLayoutGeneric class, however if you do plan on adding your own field types, it’s important that you extend it properly:

  • Generic (abstract, extends View) - Use this if field is NOT based on <input>
  • Input (abstract, extends Generic) - Easiest since it alrady implements <input> and various ways to attach button to the input with markup of Semantic UI field.

Relatioship with Model

In the examples above, we looked at the manual use where you create Field Decorator object explicitly. The most common use-case in large application is use with Models. You would need a model, such as Country model (see demos/database.php) as well as Persistence $db.

Now, in order to create a form, the following is sufficient:

$form = $app->add('Form');
$form->setModel(new Country($db);

The above will populate fields from model into the form automatically. You can use second argument to atk4uiForm::setModel() to indicate which fields to display or rely on field_visibility.

When Form fields are populated, then atk4uiForm::_decoratorFactory is consulted to make a decision on how to translate Model Field into Form Field Decorator.

The rules are rather straightforward but may change in future versions of Agile UI:

  • if enum is defined, use DropDown
  • consult atk4uiForm::$typeToDecorator property for type-to-seed association
  • type=password will use Password

You always have an option to explicitly specify which field you would like to use:

$model->addField('long_text', ['ui'=>['Form'=>'TextArea']]);

It is recommended however, that you use type when possible, because types will be universally supported by all components:

$model->addField('long_text', ['type'=>'text']);

Note

All forms will be associted with a model. If form is not explicitly linked with a model, it will create a ProxyModel and all fields will be created automatically in that model. As a result, all Field Decorators will be linked with Model Fields.

Line Input Field

class atk4\ui\FormField\Input

Implements View for presenting Input fields. Based around http://semantic-ui.com/elements/input.html.

Similar to other views, Input has various properties that you can specify directly or inject through constructor. Those properties will affect the look of the input element. For example, icon property:

Here are few ways to specify icon to an Input:

// compact
$page->add(new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line('icon'=>'search'));

// Type-hinting friendly
$line = new \atk4\ui\FormField\Line();
$line->icon='search';
$page->add($line);

// using class factory
$page->add('FormField/Line', ['icon'=>'search']);

The ‘icon’ property can be either string or a View. The string is for convenience and will be automatically substituted with new Icon($icon). If you wish to be more specifc and pass some arguments to the icon, there are two options:

// compact
$line->icon=['search', 'big'];

// Type-hinting friendly
$line->icon = new Icon('search');
$line->icon->addClass('big');

To see how Icon interprets new Icon([‘search’, ‘big’]), refer to Icon.

Note

View’s constructor will map received arguments into object properties, if they are defined or addClass() if not. See View::setProperties.

property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$placeholder

Will set placeholder property.

property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$loading

Set to “left” or “right” to display spinning loading indicator.

property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$label
property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$labelRight

Convert text into Label and insert it into the field.

property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$action
property atk4\ui\FormField\Input::$actionLeft

Convert text into Button and insert it into the field.

To see various examples of fields and their attributes see demos/field.php.

Integration with Form

When you use form::addField() it will create ‘Field Decorator’

JavaScript on Input

atk4\ui\FormField\Input::jsInput([$event[, $other_action]])

Input class implements method jsInput which is identical to View::js, except that it would target the INPUT element rather then the whole field:

$field->jsInput(true)->val(123);

AutoComplete

class atk4\ui\FormField\AutoComplete