I've been facing challenges in creating modular reusable components within my Zend Framework application. I'm not talking about Zend Framework modules, but rather the ability to have a reusable MVC widget. The issues I'm encountering may be specific to my implementation, and I'm open to starting over if someone can guide me in the right direction. Let me provide some specifics and code examples to better illustrate what I'm trying to achieve:
For instance, let's consider a Mailing List sign up form. I want to include this form on multiple pages that utilize different Controllers, which poses challenges in how to handle the data processing and return relevant messages. I don't want to resort to either of the following approaches as they are not ideal:
- Create a base controller with the form processing logic and extend it (Not recommended)
- Repeat the form processing code in each relevant controller (Even worse!)
The solution that feels cleanest to me is to create a new Controller to process the mailing list form data, use a View Helper to easily output the form and relevant markup on desired pages, and then redirect back to the page where the signup occurred after processing the form. However, I would like to leverage the form validation provided by Zend_Form, which means I need to somehow pass the form object back to the view helper if validation fails within the same request. Currently, I'm achieving this by setting it as a variable on the view and then forwarding back to the previous page instead of redirecting, which is somewhat acceptable. If validation is successful, I prefer to redirect back to the original page. However, I'm struggling with implementing this, especially passing messages back to the component regarding the signup status. While I could namespace the FlashMessenger Action Helper to avoid message conflicts with other page data, I cannot access it from within a View Helper. Hence, I'm currently opting for forwarding in this case too. Ideally, I'd prefer a redirect to prevent form resubmissions when a user refreshes the page and to maintain a clean URL. Essentially, I want to have a mini MVC dispatch process within a page, and I suspect the action stack might help with this. However, I lack knowledge in this area and any guidance would be highly appreciated. Here's my current code snippet:
Controller:
<?php
class MailingListController extends Zend_Controller_Action {
public function insertAction() {
$request = $this->getRequest();
$returnTo = $request->getParam('return_to');
if(!$request->isPost() || (!isset($returnTo) || empty($returnTo))) {
$this->_redirect('/');
}
$mailingList = new Model_MailingList();
$form = new Form_MailingList();
$returnTo = explode('/', $returnTo);
if($form->isValid($_POST)) {
$emailAddress = $form->getValue('email_address');
$mailingList->addEmailAddress($emailAddress);
$this->view->mailingListMessages = $mailingList->getMessages();
$this->view->mailingListForm = "";
}
else {
$this->view->mailingListForm = $form;
}
$this->_forward($returnTo[2], $returnTo[1], $returnTo[0]);
}
}
The 'return_to' parameter is a string containing the current URI (module/controller/action), generated in the View Helper. It would be preferable to issue a redirect inside the $form->isValid($_POST) block.
View Helper:
<?php
class Zend_View_Helper_MailingList extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract {
public function mailingList($form, $messages = "") {
if(!isset($form)) {
$request = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->getRequest();
$currentPage = $request->getModuleName() . '/' . $request->getControllerName() . '/' . $request->getActionName();
$form = new Form_MailingList();
$form->setAction('/mailing-list/insert');
$form->setCurrentPage($currentPage);
}
$html = '<div class="mailingList"><h2>Join Our Mailing List</h2>' . $form;
$html .= $messages;
$html .= '</div>';
return $html;
}
}
While obtaining an instance of the Front Controller in the View Helper isn't ideal, I aim to encapsulate as much functionality as possible.
If there's a form object with failed validation, I can pass it back to the helper for rendering error messages. Similarly, I can also pass any messages to render into the helper.
In my view scripts, I use the helper like so:
<?=$this->mailingList($this->mailingListForm, $this->mailingListMessages);?>
If neither mailingListForm nor mailingListMessages has been set on the view by MailingListController, the helper will output a new form without any messages.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated!