zf2 forms and object binding, without clearing non-passed values - php

Question

I've read through the tutorials/reference of the Form-Component in Zend-Framework 2 and maybe I missed it somehow, so I'm asking here.
I've got an object called Node and bound it to a form. I'm using the Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\ArraySerializable-Standard-Hydrator. So my Node-object has got the two methods of exchangeArray() and getArrayCopy() like this:
class Node
{
public function exchangeArray($data)
{
// Standard-Felder
$this->node_id = (isset($data['node_id'])) ? $data['node_id'] : null;
$this->node_name = (isset($data['node_name'])) ? $data['node_name'] : null;
$this->node_body = (isset($data['node_body'])) ? $data['node_body'] : null;
$this->node_date = (isset($data['node_date'])) ? $data['node_date'] : null;
$this->node_image = (isset($data['node_image'])) ? $data['node_image'] : null;
$this->node_public = (isset($data['node_public'])) ? $data['node_public'] : null;
$this->node_type = (isset($data['node_type'])) ? $data['node_type']:null;
$this->node_route = (isset($data['node_route'])) ? $data['node_route']:null;
}
public function getArrayCopy()
{
return get_object_vars($this);
}
}
In my Controller I've got an editAction(). There I want to modify the values of this Node-object. So I am using the bind-method of my form. My form has only fields to modify the node_name and the node_body-property. After validating the form and dumping the Node-object after submission of the form the node_name and node_body-properties now contain the values from the submitted form. However all other fields are empty now, even if they contained initial values before.
class AdminController extends AbstractActionController
{
public function editAction()
{
// ... more stuff here (getting Node, etc)
// Get Form
$form = $this->_getForm(); // return a \Zend\Form instance
$form->bind($node); // This is the Node-Object; It contains values for every property
if(true === $this->request->isPost())
{
$data = $this->request->getPost();
$form->setData($data);
// Check if form is valid
if(true === $form->isValid())
{
// Dumping here....
// Here the Node-object only contains values for node_name and node_body all other properties are empty
echo'<pre>';print_r($node);echo'</pre>';exit;
}
}
// View
return array(
'form' => $form,
'node' => $node,
'nodetype' => $nodetype
);
}
}
I want to only overwrite the values which are coming from the form (node_name and node_body) not the other ones. They should remain untouched.
I think a possible solution would be to give the other properties as hidden fields into the form, however I don't wanna do this.
Is there any possibility to not overwrite values which are not present within the form?

Answer 1

I rechecked the code of \Zend\Form and I gotta be honest I just guessed how I can fix my issue.
The only thing I changed is the Hydrator. It seems that the Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\ArraySerializable is not intended for my case. Since my Node-Object is an object and not an Array I checked the other available hydrators. I've found the Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\ObjectProperty-hydrator. It works perfectly. Only fields which are available within the form are populated within the bound object. This is exactly what I need. It seems like the ArraySerializable-hydrator resets the object-properties, because it calls the exchangeArray-method of the bound object (Node). And in this method I'm setting the non-given fields to null (see code in my question). Another way would propably be to change the exchangeArray-method, so that it only sets values if they are not available yet.
So the solution in the code is simple:
$form = $this->_getForm();
$form->setHydrator(new \Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\ObjectProperty()); // Change default hydrator

Answer 2

There is a bug in the class form.php, the filters are not initialized in the bindvalues method just add the line $filter->setData($this->data);
it should look like this after including the line
public function bindValues(array $values = array())
{
if (!is_object($this->object)) {
return;
}
if (!$this->hasValidated() && !empty($values)) {
$this->setData($values);
if (!$this->isValid()) {
return;
}
} elseif (!$this->isValid) {
return;
}
$filter = $this->getInputFilter();
$filter->setData($this->data); //added to fix binding empty data
switch ($this->bindAs) {
case FormInterface::VALUES_RAW:
$data = $filter->getRawValues();
break;
case FormInterface::VALUES_NORMALIZED:
default:
$data = $filter->getValues();
break;
}
$data = $this->prepareBindData($data, $this->data);
// If there is a base fieldset, only hydrate beginning from the base fieldset
if ($this->baseFieldset !== null) {
$data = $data[$this->baseFieldset->getName()];
$this->object = $this->baseFieldset->bindValues($data);
} else {
$this->object = parent::bindValues($data);
}
}
to be precious it is line no 282 in my zf2.0.6 library
this would fix your problem, this happen only for binded object situation

Answer 3

I ran into the same problem, but the solution of Raj is not the right way. This is not a bug as for today the code remains still similar without the 'fix' of Raj, adding the line:
$filter->setData($this->data);
The main problem here is when you bind an object to the form, the inputfilter is not stored inside the Form object. But called every time from the binded object.
public function getInputFilter()
...
$this->object->getInputFilter();
...
}
My problem was that I created every time a new InputFilter object when the function getInputFilter was called. So I corrected this to be something like below:
protected $filter;
...
public function getInputFilter {
if (!isset($this->filter)) {
$this->filter = new InputFilter();
...
}
return $this->filter;
}

Answer 4

I ran into the same issue today but the fix Raj suggested did not work. I am using the latest version of ZF2 (as of this writing) so I am not totally surprised that it didn't work.
Changing to another Hydrator was not possible as my properties are held in an array. Both the ObjectProperty and ClassMethods hydrators rely on your properties actually being declared (ObjectProperty uses object_get_vars and ClassMethods uses property_exists). I didn't want to create my own Hydrator (lazy!).
Instead I stuck with the ArraySerializable hydrator and altered my exchangeArray() method slightly.
Originally I had:
public function exchangeArray(array $data)
{
$newData = [];
foreach($data as $property=>$value)
{
if($this->has($property))
{
$newData[$property] = $value;
}
}
$this->data = $newData;
}
This works fine most of the time, but as you can see it blows away any existing data in $this->data.
I tweaked it as follows:
public function exchangeArray(array $data)
{
$newData = [];
foreach($data as $property=>$value)
{
if($this->has($property))
{
$newData[$property] = $value;
}
}
//$this->data = $newData; I changed this line...
//to...
$this->data = array_merge($this->data, $newData);
}
This preserves any existing keys in $this->data if they are missing from the new data coming in. The only downside to this approach is I can no longer use exchangeArray() to overwrite everything held in $this->data. In my project this approach is a one-off so it is not a big problem. Besides, a new replaceAllData() or overwrite() method is probably preferred in any case, if for no other reason than being obvious what it does.