Form from another model in a view - validation

So I'm trying to extend the Blog tutorial adding some comments:
Post hasMany Comments
I want to display the add comment form in the same view as the 'post view'. Thing is I don't know the best way to get this approach. I thought about three ways:
Creating a function in Comments Controller to handle the data.
Creating a function in Post Controller to handle the data.
Deal with the data in the same function that deals with the post views.
The main problem with the two first 'solutions' is that the validation errors doesn't show up in the form unless I do some messy hacking of saving the invalidated field in a session variable and then parsing the variable on the beforeFilter callback, like this:
function beforeFilter () {
if ($this->Session->check('comment_error')) {
$this->Post->Comment->validationErrors = $this->Session->read('comment_error');
$this->Session->delete('comment_error');
}
}
What I basically do is adapt the invalidated fields to the actual view and allow it to show properly. This works really well, but it seems so ugly to me. What would be the best approach?
Another related question: should a controller reflect a view? I mean on that example, I thought about only having a Comment Model and dealing with all the data in the controller where's the form to add a comment (even though it's in the Post Controller).

Sounds like you're looking for the Mutlivalidatable behaviour: http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/dardosordi/2008/07/29/multivalidatablebehavior-using-many-validation-rulesets-per-model
This allows you to define more than 1 validation ruleset per model. Use your controller to determine which one to apply upon posting something.
P.S. I have only ever used this on a Cake 1.3 project, not sure if it'll work on 2.0.

I see it this way:
Under every post there is an input box "Add comment" with a button to submit.
After submitting some text a form redirects to comments_controller where the comment is saved with this post_id, body, author, date etc.
After the comment is saved and all the logic is done it takes you back to the post.
Under each post there are all related comments displayed (having the same post_id sorted by date or whatever).

Related

How to return to another page after finishing process in Laravel?

This is a little bit hard to understand even the title I put. Sorry about that I just do not know how to clearly explain this, but I will try...
So for example I have a controller and inside that controller I have a function which return the data in the table of my database. then in the last column of every row, I make view,add,edit,delete options as links. When a user clicks on the add for example, they will redirect to an add page. After they submit the form of the add page. they should be redirected to the first page that return the data from the table. but the problem is, the variables of foreach loop in the first page do not got recognized by laravel anymore. because they do not got processed since the route does not goes to the controller and to the function that return the data instead it goes to add function.
So I want to know is there anyway to solve this? If you could provide sample code, I would appreciate a lot thanks
From your explanation, I believe the code to go back to the original page after adding, editing etc is simply return redirect()->back(). This will take the user back to the previous page. As for data continuity, one approach would be considering using sessions. They save data globally and can be accessed from any controller once saved. To do this, simply save the data with session(['session_name' => $data]) and to retrieve the data use session('session_name'). Let me know if this helps!
If you want ti redirect after something like a login or an activation process you can do it with something like this:
return redirect()->to('login')
You can specify the path from your web.php file as you can see in my example in 'myPath'
As #DerickMasai correctly pointed out it is better to use named routes instead of hard coding the path itself.
Naming a route can work like so:
Route::get('/login', [LoginController::class, 'index'])->name('login');

Is it normal that inputs (generated by html helpers) are influenced by POST data?

In a MVC app we implemented a mini forum. New posts in this forum are ajaxed. The AJAX POST action either returns a response form (partial view) or new post html and form html as a JSON.
New post and form are both rendered from views by this method. The model provided for the form has some null values, but the corresponding inputs store values taken from POST data (I verified the generated data to make sure it's not something that is done by the browser). The inputs are generated by html helpers (such as TextBoxFor).
So my question is, is this normal behavior in MVC and if it is, then how do I go about making those inputs have empty/null values (or even some specific value)? When debugging the values in the model are exactly as I set them (which is null, but same thing happens for any value really), but inputs for this very model still hold values taken from POST data.
I tested how does this work with good old PartialView instead of rendering html to string and returning it through JSON, but the results were exactly the same (so the method I use for rendering those views should be unrelated to the problem).
I came across this question: View data dictionary overriding model data in ASP.NET MVC
But from what I checked in my app, the POST data isn't actually stored in ViewData and the OP wasn't AJAXing data so redirects made more sense in his case.
I came across this post which explain this problem in detail and shows ways to deal with it.
To sum it up. Yes, this is normal behavior of htmlHelpers during POST action. To prevent it you can run ModelState.Clear(); in your post action (preferably just before you return\render the view). Optionally it is also possible to remove just one field using ModelState.Remove("PropName"); where PropName is the name of the model property which you don't want to be passed from POST data.

Symfony2 and filter, right strategy

I'm asking what is the best strategy for filtering with Symfony2.
I want to filter a table of entities (hotels). This filter should allow me to :
choose hotels with or whitout email, with or without web site etc.
choose hotels based on state and/or city (relation OneToMany)
choose what information I want to display on the table with checkboxs (for example display "email adress" on the hotel table, but do not display "tel" or "web site").
First I think to build the filter form on the HotelController. When the filter is submitted, I had a FlashBag for every $_POST sended, redirect to the same page, and if there are FlashBag I send cookies to the $reponse. Then I display the table filtered with data who are on the cookie.
But I dont't really like this, cause I had a very big indexAction() on the HotelController, and I think it'as not really clean to change $_POST to FlasBag to Cookie, is it ? I do this redirection, cause by refreshing the page, data are not posted again.
I'm also asking a question, to prevent a too big IndexAction() method, can I put some code to another method, for exemple a method PostToFlashBag() and another FlashBagToCookie(), or every method on a Controller has to end with the word "Action" and must be accessible with the router ?
Then, I think to another thing : had an entity "Filter", with every row I need. For exemple "WithEmail", "DisplayTel" etc.. Then I can build a FilterType easily, and update the Filter entitie, to redirect to the same page (again, to prevent reposting data if the user refreshes the page). Finally, I can display the table with the object Filter, with a method on the HotelRepository.
That seems great, but I'm a little worry because the filter entity will only have one entry, and I have to find the Filter(1). Due to MVC, is it correct to have a model with only one entry ?
What strategy would you choose (maybe another one) ? I'm interesting to learn good practice with MVC and Symfony2 devloppemnt.
Having a dedicated model class - let's call it Filter - that will receive the values input by the user, is definitely the way to go.
More over, use the Symfony2 form on this input, so you can have validation, and be sure that the withEmailis trully a boolean, etc. From you Filter, build you SQL/Doctrine query and return what your controller have to return, be it a view, or raw datas.
You can have any method you want in a controller. After all, controllers in Symfony2 are plain old PHP objects. They only have to implement ContainerAwareInterface. Usually they inherits Controller, but this inheritance only brings some proxy methods, like getDoctrine or render.
The only convention is that methods which are used as route must end with Action

Codeigniter - change url at method call

I was wondering if the following can be done in codeigniter.
Let's assume I have a file, called Post.php, used to manage posts in an admin interface.
It has several methods, such as index (lists all posts), add, update, delete...
Now, I access the add method, so that the url becomes
/posts/add
And I add some data. I click "save" to add the new post. It calls the same method with an if statement like "if "this->input->post('addnew')"" is passed, call the model, add it to the database
Here follows the problem:
If everything worked fine, it goes to the index with the list of all posts, and displays a confirmation
BUT
No the url would still be posts/add, since I called the function like $this->index() after verifying data was added. I cannot redirect it to "posts/" since in that case no confirmation message would be shown!
So my question is: can i call a method from anther one in the same class, and have the url set to that method (/posts/index instead of /posts/add)?
It's kinda confusing, but i hope i gave you enough info to spot the problem
Cheers!
Use the redirect() in conjunction with CodeIgniter's Flash Data, or opt for AJAX.

Use CodeIgniter form validation in a view

I have footer view that's included on all my pages which contains a form. I would like to be able to make use of CI's form validation library to validate the form. Is that possible?
Currently the form posts back to the current page using the PHP_SELF environment variable. I don't want to get it to post to a controller because when validation fails it loads the controller name in the address bar, which is not the desired behaviour.
Any suggestions gratefully received.
Thanks,
Gaz
One way, whilst far from ideal, would be to create a "contact" function in every controller. This could be in the form of a library/helper.
CI doesn't natively let you call one controller from another, although I believe there are extensions that enable this.
Another option would be an AJAX call instead, which would allow you to post to a generic controller, validate etc whilst remaining on the current page.
In this use case, I would definitely go for an AJAX call to a generic controller. This allows you to show errors even before submitting in the origin page.
Another way (slightly more complex), involves posting your form data to a generic controller method, passing it a hidden input containing the current URL.
The generic controller method handling your form can then redirect to the page on which the user submitted the form, passing it the validation errors or a success message using flash session variables: $this->session->set_flashdata('errors',validation_errors()) might do the trick (untested)
The good thing about this is that you can use the generic form-handling method for both the ajax case (suppressing the redirect) and the non-ajax case
AJAX would be best, just like everyone else says.
I would redirect the form to one function in one controller, you could make a controller just for the form itself. Then have a hidden value with the return URL. As far as errors go you could send them back with flashdata.
Just remember to never copy paste code, it a bad practice and guarantees bugs.
//make sure you load the proper model
if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE){
// invalid
$redirect = $this->input->post('url');
$this->session->set_flashdata('errors',validation_errors());
redirect($redirect);
} else {
/*
success, do what you want here
*/
redirect('send them where ever');
}

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