MorphForm v1.0
Shawn Conlin
Wolvesbane Designs
http://www.wolvesbanedesigns.com
Introduction:
MorphForm, this is your user….
Your user is a web/PHP developer who is looking for an easy and efficient way
to process forms on the site being developed.
User, this is MorphForm……
MorphForm is a PHP class designed to provide you with flexible, easy, and
efficient form processing.
You make such a good couple……
Class Usage:
This class was designed to make adding basic forms to websites extremely easy.
In fact there are only 3 steps to it.
1. Create your Form
When creating your form there are several things you need to build into it.
The first are the hidden fields that will tell the script what to do with your
form data. These entries take the form of:
<input type="hidden" name=Process Option value=FileName>
The processing options are MF_Email, MF_Outfile, and MF_Browser. These options
are not exclusive and can be used more than once in a single form by adding a
suffix, see the example below. This technique is most useful for sending
multiple emails based on form input and/or writing data to files.
<input type="hidden" name="MF_Email_1" value="email1.txt">
<input type="hidden" name="MF_Email_2" value="email2.txt">
The next important aspect of your form is the naming of your fields. To take
full advantage of MorphForm's features you need to use prefixes on the field
names to tell it which fields need special attention. The prefixes must be
separated from the rest of the name by an underscore.
The recognized prefixes are:
R - Marks the field as required
E - Denotes the field requires an email address
P - Marks fields that accepts phone numbers and formats the as (123) 456-7890
N - Denotes the field only accepts numeric entries.
The prefixes can be combined to mark a field for multiple validation, as in
RE_Email to cause the field to be required and to contain an email address.
The final requirement for the form is that the submit button be titled "submit"
in all lowercase. This is due to the fact that PHP variables are case sensitive.
2. Create your Form processing page
Depending on your programming style, this may just be a continuation of the
page you began in the last section. If you are not sure what I am talking about,
using PHP you can have a single page offer the input request and output. I have
done this in the examples included in this package (See index.php).
Below is the code you will need to have in your processing page to use this
class.
<?php
/* Load the class definition file */
Require "morphform.cls";
/* Create a new instance of the class. This can use $_POST, $_GET, or any
other Associative Array */
$MF = new MorphForm($_POST);
/* Determine if errors were found */
if ($MF->CheckForErrors()) {
/* if errors were found, display them */
$MF->ProcessErrors();
} else {
/* if there were no errors process the data and generate output as
specified */
$MF->OutputForm();
}
?>
I suspect that very few people will use this code as it sits if for no other
reason than the fact that it won't make for a very pretty page. Most people are
going to want to work it into their existing layouts and will at a minimum add
some instructions and possibly re-display the form when errors are found.
When errors are detected and the ProcessErrors() function is called, the errors
will be displayed on the screen. The errors are listed with an error description
followed by the fields that caused the errors, ie.,
The following required fields need to be completed:
First Name
Last Name
Email
There is no automatic output from the class if no errors occur. All output from
the class is determined by the configuration settings. If you opt not to have
browser output from the data, it is recommended to have something displayed as
part of your processing page.
3. Create your Configuration Files
The configuration files are discussed in their own section.
Configuration Files:
From a usage standpoint, the configuration files are the most important part of
this package. These files tell the class how to format the data it was given and
what type of output is required. You can create/edit these files with any plain
text editor (Notepad comes to mind) you want and they do not require any
special permissions on the server.
When you are creating the configuration files, you specify where to insert the
form data by entering the field name in brackets. For example, typing "Your
name is [r_Name]" would display "Your name is John" after being processed.
Email Configuration:
The email configuration files have the most complex formatting of all the files.
This is because you need to place information on specific lines and/or leave
blank lines in the file.
The following is a line by line breakdown of the format:
1. From
2. To - Multiple addresses should be separated by commas
3. CC - Multiple addresses should be separated by commas
4. BCC - Multiple addresses should be separated by commas
5. Subject
6. Body - From line 6 on will be posted into the body of the email
File Configuration:
This configuration file requires that the first line be the path to the file
you wish to write to. All of the other lines created in this file will be
written to the specified file.
Browser Configuration:
The browser configuration file does not have any special constraints, the whole
document is pulled and displayed after a successful submission.
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