What are renderers?
Before release 3.0, form outputting logic was implemented as methods of HTML_QuickForm class. This led to two problems:
Bloat of the said class (80+ methods!)
Difficulties in adding new output logic (i.e. using template engines)
In release 3.0, new system was implemented. The form output logic is now contained in classes that extend HTML_QuickForm_Renderer, their behaviour is based on Visitor design pattern from the classic "Design Patterns" book. This gives the following advantages:
Code for some particular output method is loaded only when the method is used.
It is much easier to add new output method.
There are 8 renderers available since release 3.1.1, of which 2 are based on pre-3.0 code and 6 are new. The following template engines are directly suported: Smarty, HTML_Template_Sigma, HTML_Template_IT, HTML_Template_Flexy.
The main steps of using any available renderer are quite similar:
<?php // include the renderer class require_once 'HTML/QuickForm/Renderer/FooBar.php'; // instantiate the renderer $renderer =& new HTML_QuickForm_Renderer_FooBar($options); // do some customization $renderer->adjustSomething('element1', '...'); // ... $renderer->adjustSomething('elementN', '...'); // process the form $form->accept($renderer); // output the results $renderer->toFooBar(); ?> |
Actual methods for customization and doing the output will of course depend on renderer type.
Concerning usage examples: Usage examples provided in the manual are pretty basic. More complex examples for Default renderer can be found in docs/ directory, for all other renderers - in docs/renderers/ directory of HTML_QuickForm.
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