[RESOLVED] Function not working right

spiritssight

Hello Everyone,

I am creating a function to make making forms a little faster here is my first attempt at it:

This is whats happening, I get the form on the screen and all but if you look at the source through the browers you will see that it not lining up the arguments for the function, I want to be able to use some arguments some times and not other times, so say if I did not want to use the $class one then I would leave this blank, and if I want to use it then I enter it, when used it will not put the $class where it should go and is putting it instead of the $name value its puting the $class value there

I am probly not explaining good but if you read the code and then see the two examples of what is being put out by looking at the source you should see what I am trying to show that happening

Thanks for the help
Christopher

<?php
// $name="name";
// $class="style";
// $value="cpe";
// $display_q="what is your name";

function Form_Gen($type="", $name="name", $class="", $value="cpe", $display_q="what is your name")
{
echo'
<form>
<label for="' . $name . '">' . $display_q . '</label>
<input class="' . $class . '" type="' . $type . '" id="' . $name . '" name="' . $name . '" value="'. $value .'" />
</form>
';}

Form_Gen(text, style);

?>

gives:
<form>
<label for="style">what is your name</label>
<input class="" type="text" id="style" name="style" value="cpe" />
</form>

instead of:
<form>
<label for="name">what is your name</label>
<input class="style" type="text" id="name" name="name" value="cpe" />
</form>

bpat1434

That's because you're sending "style" as the second argument; however, you need to "skip" that argument. The only way I can think of right now is to really check each variable you have. Something like:

function Form_Gen($type=null, $name=null, $class=null, $value=null, $display_q=null)
{
    $type = is_null($type) ? '' : $type;
    $name = is_null($name) ? 'name' : $name;
    $class = is_null($class) ? '' : $class;
    $value = is_null($value) ? 'cpe' : $value;
    $display_q = is_null($display_q) ? 'what is your name' : $display_q;

echo '
<form>
    <label for="' . $name . '">' . $display_q . '</label>
    <input class="' . $class . '" type="' . $type . '" id="' . $name . '" name="' . $name . '" value="' . $value . '" />
</form>';
}

Form_Gen('text', null, 'style');

Hope that helps. But at this point, you should probably look at using a class to create your forms. Each element can be a sub-class of the "form" class and you can build them up from there. Since there will be many elements (inputs, check-boxes, textareas) and some functionality will overlap (names, IDs, labels) but some will not (values and "selected" items). Just some food-for-thought.

kkobashi

Whenever I see forms generated on the fly I cringe. You stand to waste more time creating code to generate the form rather than just marking up the form via HTML/XHTML. Then, if you are a generalist, you attempt to create a forms generator that attempts to take into account every nuance of forms. Its more error prone as well. And also, you have to test that the form generator is producing the right code.

Suppose you are working on a team with a web designer that changes his/her mind often. Now what? Are you going to go into your form gen code and monkey with it everytime to get the right layout? Leave that job up to the web designer to deal with. Let him/her use HTML/XHTML to do the markup and design it his/her way. You don't want to be bothered with writing code to write markup do you? Its senseless.

Use HTML/XHTML for what is supposed to be - a markup language. PHP is not a markup language but a preprocessor. Instead, create HTML/XHTML form templates and pass the data into the form template.

Also, what makes this "faster"?