On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 2:59 AM, Jason Norwood-Young < jason@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 17:32 -0500, Jay Blanchard wrote: > > [snip] > > I can't say I've ever had a form that exactly matched a database table > > for a user perspective. From an admin perspective that changes, but that > > was when I downloaded PHPMyAdmin for the client. It was amazing, every > > form matched the database table and you could view all the rows too, and > > even create your own queries. > > > > Table discovery is something I use for marshalling data back and forth > > from database tables, but not usually for presenting a user form. > > [/snip] > > > > That is why there is code to exclude columns from the form and > > essentially the group of functions pretty much does what phpmyadmin > > does. Handling multiple tables in one form of course is a different > > story. > > > > Actually it's quite easy. I've got a similar object to the one you guys > described (can't really share it - I'm on salary so technically it > belongs to my boss.) Anyhow when I do my table layout, if there's a > look-up, I name the field "lookuptable_id" in the DB. In my object, it > looks for any field ending in "_id" (or whatever you specify to the > object - "_id" is just the default) and it creates a drop-down of the > options. > > The object also takes an array of ignore_fields, hidden_fields (good for > ID's on updates), friendlynames (you don't always want to use the > fieldname in the database, but anyhow the object replaces underscores > and capitalises), and a bunch of other customising array properties with > useful defaults. It also detects whether this is an insert or update and > knows how to route the action, and has support for file uploads (and > customises the enctype of the form for that). > > So basically you can have a very nice form, customised, with one or two > lines of code to draw the form, as long as you design your object and DB > well. im just curious, has anyone here heard of like, templates ?? personally, i really dont like mashing a ton of different layers all into a single piece of code, hit the database, do some logic, render the page.... those things are supposed to be separate ;) code igniter might not be the best framework in the world, but at least its got the basics covered. if you build a few of the obvious views, select w/ variable number of options, inputs, tables... well it works out quite nicely and the code is all separated, as it should be. -nathan
