form design pattern review (short)

[commandonz]

I'm new to PHP, and i'm working on a free headphone database website- yes it would be used - to help me learn PHP. FYI i'm a professional Java programmer. If someone could have a quick read of this and let me know if they can see any flaws in my design pattern i'd be most appreciative 🙂

I'm using the smarty templating system. I was using VDaemon for validation, but it didn't play nice with my debugger (which I really need for learning php) so i'm rolling my own. I only need simple validation anyway.

Basically a form is submitted to PHP, I use my own validation library to check the fields (ie is a number, is a URL, etc), and if there's an error the name of the field's added to an array and the form's redisplayed. If the name of a field is in that array (checked with in_array()) then it's highlighted red. eg (ignore trivial errors)

{if (in_array($errors, 'name'))}
<td>(in red)Field name</td>
{else}
<td>field name</td>
{/if}

The PHP script also adds all the values submitted to another array so that the user doesn't have to retype everything if they make one error. I just use something like this

<input type="text" value="{$fields.name}"> (this is smarty syntax)

Does this look ok? Can anyone suggest a better way to do it? Thanks for your time 🙂

[LordShryku]

Well, I've never used smarty, so the syntax is foreign to me, but out of the snippet you showed, there is one problem I see.

{if (in_array($errors, 'name'))}

The parameters for in_array are backwards. It should be in_array(needle, haystack).

[commandonz]

Thanks for your reply. I wrote that from memory, i'm not really worried about little details like that, more the pattern and if there are easier ways to do things. I do like the needle & haystack parameters names to functions 🙂

[LordShryku]

Well, as far as syntax, like I said, I don't use smarty, but here's what I would do:

<td<?php echo in_array('name', $errors) ? ' class="red"' : NULL; ?>>Field name</td>

Same thing for the most part, just no templating and using a ternary operator instead.

[commandonz]

Cheers. One of the major shortcomings I see in PHP is how easy it makes it to write really bad code. UI and "business logic" are so intertwined you often can't change one without the other. Of course, with a little dicipline you can write good code 🙂