Stefan Gabos | webdeveloper
Example for: Zebra_Form, a jQuery augmented PHP library for HTML form building and validation

A login form

  • try clicking on the submit button without filling the form and then, as you fill the form, to see the JavaScript validation in action
  • for each example, notice how the PHP code of the form remains basically unchanged, despite the template variations
  • disable JavaScript to see the server-side validation in action
  • although in all my examples I use HTML output, you can switch to XHTML output by using the doctye method
  • try the example in another browser and see that it works, out of the box. including IE6!
<?php

    // include the Zebra_Form class
    require 'path/to/Zebra_Form.php';

    // instantiate a Zebra_Form object
    $form = new Zebra_Form('form', 'post', '', array('autocomplete' => 'off'));

    // the label for the "email" element
    $form->add('label', 'label_email', 'email', 'Email');

    // add the "email" element
    $obj = $form->add('text', 'email');

    // set rules
    $obj->set_rule(array(

        // error messages will be sent to a variable called "error", usable in custom templates
        'required'  =>  array('error', 'Email is required!'),
        'email'     =>  array('error', 'Email address seems to be invalid!'),

    ));

    // "password"
    $form->add('label', 'label_password', 'password', 'Password');
    $obj = $form->add('password', 'password');
    $obj->set_rule(array(
        'required'  => array('error', 'Password is required!'),
        'length'    => array(6, 10, 'error', 'The password must have between 6 and 10 characters!'),
    ));

    // "remember me"
    $form->add('checkbox', 'remember_me', 'yes');
    $form->add('label', 'label_remember_me_yes', 'remember_me_yes', 'Remember me', array('style' => 'font-weight:normal'));

    // "submit"
    $form->add('submit', 'btnsubmit', 'Submit');

    // if the form is valid
    if ($form->validate()) {

        // show results
        show_results();

    // otherwise
    } else

        // auto generate output, labels above form elements
        $form->render();

?>

In this example, the output is automatically generated by Zebra_Form's render method.

<!-- must be in strict mode! -->
<!doctype html>

<html>

    <head>

        <meta charset="utf-8">

        <title>Zebra_Form Example</title>

        <!-- load Zebra_Form's stylesheet file -->
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="path/to/zebra_form.css">

    </head>

    <body>

        <!--

            the content from the "PHP Source" tab goes here

        -->

        <!-- we're loading the JavaScript files at the bottom of the page so we don't delay page rendering -->

        <!-- try to load jQuery from CDN server and fallback to local source if not available -->
        <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script>window.jQuery || document.write('<script src="path/to/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"><\/script>')</script>

        <!-- load Zebra_Form's JavaScript file -->
        <script src="path/to/zebra_form.js"></script>

    </body>

</html>