Zend Form View Helper - php

Question

I've built a View helper that will build a checkbox label and input. The issue I'm having is on populate the checkbox value is ignored.
My form element looks like:
require_once 'Zend/Form/Element/Xhtml.php';
class Core_Form_Element_Other extends Zend_Form_Element_Xhtml
{
public $helper = 'formOther';
public function isValid ($value, $context = null)
{
return parent::isValid($value, $context);
}
public function getValue()
{
return parent::getValue();
}
}
The view helper is:
class Core_View_Helper_FormOther extends Zend_View_Helper_FormElement
{
public function formOther($name, $value = null, $attribs = null)
{
$labelStyle = '';
$label = '';
$checkboxAttrib = array('checked' => 1,'unchecked' => 0);
$textAttrib = array('size' => 10);
foreach ($attribs as $k => $v)
{
$a = str_replace(array('text-', 'checkbox-'), '', $k);
if (strpos($k, 'text-') !== false)
{
$textAttrib[$a] = $v;
}
if (strpos($k, 'checkbox-') !== false)
{
$checkboxAttrib[$a] = $v;
}
}
$textValue = '';
$checkboxValue = $checkboxAttrib['unchecked'];
if (!empty($value))
{
$checkboxValue = $checkboxAttrib['checked'];
$textValue = $value;
}
if (isset($attribs['checkboxLabel']))
{
$label = $attribs['checkboxLabel'];
}
if (isset($attribs['checkboxLabelStyle']))
{
$labelStyle = $attribs['checkboxLabelStyle'];
}
return $this->view->formCheckbox($name.'_check', $checkboxValue, null, $checkboxAttrib)
. ' <label style="'. $labelStyle .'">'. $label .'</label> '
. $this->view->formText($name, $textValue, $textAttrib);
}
}
and Finally it's called with:
$other = $this->createElement('Other', 'otherElem')
->setAttrib('checkboxLabel', 'Other')
->setAttrib('checkbox-checked', 'yes')
->setAttrib('checkbox-unChecked', 'no')
->setAttrib('checkboxLabelStyle', 'font-weight:normal;padding-right:0px;')
->setAttrib('text-size', 20)
->setDecorators(array(
'ViewHelper',
array('Errors', array('class' => 'error small', 'placement' => Zend_Form_Decorator_Abstract::PREPEND)),
array('htmlTag', array('tag' => 'div', 'class' => 'span-8 last'))
));
$this->_telements[] = $other;

Answer 1

What exactly do you mean by 'on populate'? If your value is missing upon submission of the form when the checkbox is not checked, that is default html behavior.
At any point do you set the checkbox itself with an attribute 'checked="checked"'? Value of a checkbox and checked-ness are different things.
In my opinion, using custom decorators is the most-wrongest way to style zend forms. Output default html from zend, make your form labels pretty with jQuery. Zend forms are good for a lot of things, but style and arrangement is not one of them.