README

A library to simplify form building in php applications. It uses a template approach, supplied by Plates. It is inspired by the Laravel Collective Form library and a previous generations of form builder developed by Konsulting.

You can use the library in any PHP project, but we have included some helpers for usage within a Laravel Project.

Documentation is still being developed, so please bear with us.

Installation

We recommend using composer to install the library.

composer require konsulting/form-builder

Usage with Laravel

The package will auto-register the Service Provider and Facade in Laravel 5.5+. In earlier versions of Laravel, you will need to manually register them yourself in your config/app.php.

"providers" => [
    ...
    "Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Laravel\\FormBuilderServiceProvider"
],

"aliases" => [
    ...
    "Form" => "Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Laravel\\FormBuilderFacade"
]

You will then be able to access the FormBuilder instance though the Facade in your views (or anywhere else you need to).

// For example
Form::text('name', $yourName)->withLabel('Your Name')

Usage outside Laravel

To begin using the form builder, you need to construct it using the Plates Engine (which essentially tells it which templates to use) and a class resolver (which effectively tells the build where to look for each form elements' class).

    use League\Plates\Engine;
    use Konsulting\FormBuilder\FormBuilder;
    use Konsulting\FormBuilder\ClassResolver;

    //...
    
    $builder = new FormBuilder(
        new Engine(__DIR__ . '/../../vendor/konsulting/form-builder/partials/bootstrap3'),
        new ClassResolver('Konsulting\\FormBuilder\\Elements\\')
    );

There is a simple API to build up your form elements. Each element shares a set of common methods, and we have set up the base set of html form elements.

Shared methods

Setting attributes

• withLabel(label) and withoutLabel
• withError(message) and withoutError
• withFeedback(type, message) and withoutFeedback
• withHelp(message)
• withAddon(content, position=before|after) - specific addon to the input (e.g. calendar icon to the right of an input box)
• prepend(content) - place content before the whole html block
• append(content) - place content after the whole html block
• withAttributes(['name' => value, ...]) - set a range of attributes, or those without specific setters

Retrieving attributes

• attributes([array_of_keys_wanted])
• attributesExcept([array_of_keys_to_exclude])

Form Elements

• input(type, name, value)
• checkbox(name, value)
• radio(name, value)
• select(name, options, selected)
• textarea(name, value)
• date(name, value)
• time(name, value)
• datetime(name, value)

Dates and time

Dates and time have an additional method, split(), which is used to generate input boxes that are split into each component of the date/time. There is a DateTimeFormats helper class, which is used to set the formats for user input/display and for persistence.

The helper also contains functions used to help split the date into components or re-combine it based on the settings.

When using the split() method, your dates and times will need to be recombined when validating them, for example.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and will be fully credited. We will accept contributions by Pull Request.

Please:

• Use the PSR-2 Coding Standard
• Add tests, if you’re not sure how, please ask.
• Document changes in behaviour, including readme.md.

Testing

We use PHPUnit for this package.

Run tests using PHPUnit: vendor/bin/phpunit