UNDER DEVELOPMENT - NOT READY

What is MistyForms?

MistyForms is a form builder system based on Smarty 3.

It is designed to make it as easy as possible to create usable, safe and consistent forms.

Why should I use it?

Because forms are simple things, but they actually require a lot of work to be implemented the right way. The input must be validated, and it's never acceptable to lose the user data when there is an error with the input. As a result every form requires a lot of code to read the data, check it, and create a new form with all the submitted data when there's an error.

The alternative is to use a form builder. With MistyForms you only have to specify the form and its requirements in the Smarty template, and you are done.

How does it work

First you have to create a template with the form and its requirements, let's call it form.tpl:

{mf_form}
	{mf_row label="Username" for="username"}
		{mf_text id="username" required="1" minLength="5" maxLength="20"}
		<!-- Yes you can put additional HTML code wherever you want, isn't that awesome? -->
	{/mf_row}

	{mf_row label="Email" for="email"}
		{mf_email id="email" required="1"}
	{/mf_row}

	{mf_action id="register" value="Send form"}
{/mf_form}

and then you have to define a Handler and register it:

<?php

class ExampleHandler implements MistyForms\Handler
{
	public function initialize( $view )
	{
		// assign values to the view
		// plugins will get the value automatically based on the id
		$view->assign(...);
	}

	// this is the name of the 'action' in the template
	public function register( array $data )
	{
		// $data is an associative array containing the already-validated user input

		// redirect the user to a new page or return 'false' and show the form again
	}
}

// configure smarty here, and assign an instance to $view

MistyForms\Form::setupForm($view, new \ExampleHandler());
$view->fetch('form.tpl');

And that's it. MistyForms will handle everything else for you.

Features

What it does:

• Makes your forms more usable:
  • All forms are consistent, both in look and functionality
  • User submitted data is never lost, no matter how many times the user re-submit the form
• Makes it simpler to create forms
  • The form and its requirements are defined in your Smarty template. No more PHP configuration
  • The code is very concise, almost as concise as writing a HTML form
• Makes your forms safer
  • The input is automatically server-side validated according to your requirements
  • Crafted data is discarded (e.g. values added to a select field using firebug)

What it doesn't do:

• Escaping. MistyForms only makes sure that the data you received complies with the requirements you specified. Escaping of the input is your responsability

What it will do in future:

• Javascript validation

Requirements

MistyForms requires Smarty 3 and PHP 5.3

Browser support

MistyForms supports all modern browsers, IE6 included. Note: mf_button required IE7+, because IE6 doesn't handle <button> elements correctly

The styles are still under development, and have been tested only with Firefox 5+ and Chrome 10+.