I posted a question on a list I participate in and this is the conversation so far. I thought the discussion had some useful information, so I'm posting it with Ed's permission:

Does anyone here have any opinions about QuickForm, the PEAR package? I am using it in a fairly big way right now, that is, the app I'm writing using QuickForm will serve as a checkout form to a store application and there are many stores which will be using it. I've used it here and there on other projects and I've worked on a project where it was the technology of choice for form construction, but I've never run across any opinions about it.

My opinion is that it is quite good, and I don't understand why it seems to be used very rarely. Maybe there's something wrong with it I just don't see. Or maybe it's just sort of obscure.

Peggy

I've built several apps out of Quickform and quickform-controller.

Best,
edg

Thanks, Ed. I'm just trying to find out what people's opinions are about it. Think it's a good way to go for form building? Any drawbacks?

Peggy

I've built several apps using a combination of DB_DataObject, HTML_Quickform and HTML_Quickform_Controller. Also, and most important, Smarty templates. The combination works very well.

Quickform generated forms are not ready for prime time, but they make an excellent prototype. Then you build a Smarty template to hold the form and use Quickform to accept the data, do the validation and execute the action function. Quickform and Smarty play well together. Quickform has the concept of plug in renderers, and smarty is accessed via one of the plugins.

Quickform_controller made excellent multipage wizards. It can make tabbed interfaces, one-way and two-way wizards, and other multi-page form flows that I haven't used.

I found the software to be stable and reliable, and when I asked questions about it on the PHP Pear list, I got good concise answers.

DB_DataObjects is another part of the team. It encapsulates the tables of a relational database (usually MySQL, of course) in some convenient objects.

I'd use all this again.

Best,
edg


Thanks so much for your response -- you've given me some ideas -- I
haven't used HTML_Quickform_Controller yet. And you are right about
Smarty--it really does finish off the job nicely -- I always use
Smarty. Every time I use Quickforms I am impressed at how good it is,
and then wonder why it isn't more widely used.

Peggy

Quickform/Smarty integration is a bit complex. Add controller, and you
have a mess, if you follow the examples.

I think the reason it doesn't get used is that there is no snappy web
site touting it and the documentation is unfriendly. It's kinda
model-view-controller, but only kinda.

L8R,
edg