How to submit a form in Zend? - php

Question

I have following action to display a form
public function showformAction() {
$this->view->form = new Form_MyForm();
$this->view->form->setAction( 'submitform' );
}
above action shows a form successfully with only one textarea and submit button.
And I am using following action to submit above form:
public function submitformAction() {
$form = new Form_MyForm();
$request = $this->getRequest();
if ( $request->isPost() ) {
$values = $form->getValues();
print_r($values);die();
} else {
echo 'Invalid Form';
}
}
Above action is showing following output:
Array ( [myfield] => )
It means it is not posting values correctly and always shows empty array or I am not getting posted values correctly. How to post values to submitformAction().
Thanks

Answer 1

I think you must use the isValid() before accessing the values of a submitted form, because it's right there that the values are checked and valorized
public function submitformAction() {
$form = new Form_MyForm();
$request = $this->getRequest();
if ( $request->isPost() ) {
if ($form->isValid( $request->getPost() )) {
$values = $form->getValues();
print_r($values);die();
}
} else {
echo 'Invalid Form';
}
}

Answer 2

In complement to #VAShhh response. With some more details:
You need to do two things, populate your form fields with the POSTed data and applying security filters and validators to that data. Zend_Form provides one simple function which perform both, it's isValid($data).
So you should:
build your form
test you are in a POST request
populate & filter & validate this data
either handle the fact in can be invalid and re-show the form wich is now
decorated with Errors OR retrieve valid data from the form
So you should get:
function submitformAction() {
$form = new Form_MyForm();
$request = $this->getRequest();
if ( $request->isPost() ) {
if (!$form->isValid($request->getPost())) {
$this->view->form = $form;
// here maybe you could connect to the same view script as your first action
// another solution is to use only one action for showform & submitform actions
// and detect the fact it's not a post to do the showform part
} else {
// values are secure if filters are on each form element
// and they are valid if all validators are set
$securizedvalues = $form->getValues();
// temporary debug
print_r($securizedvalues);die();
// here the nice thing to do at the end, after the job is quite
// certainly a REDIRECT with a code 303 (Redirect after POSt)
$redirector = $this->_helper->getHelper('Redirector');
$redirector->setCode(303)
->setExit(true)
->setGotoSimple('newaction','acontroller','amodule');
$redirector->redirectAndExit();
} else {
throw new Zend_Exception('Invalid Method');
}
}
And as said in the code re-showing the form you shoudl really try to use the same function for both showing and handling POST as a lot of steps are really the same:
building the form
showing it in the view in case of errors
By detecting the request is a POST you can detect you are in the POST handling case.