Hello all
i am building a web based front end for HTML_QuickForm and would benefit from some input as to features.
The purpose of the exercise is to create a rapid web-application development tool for database driven web-sites. Most of the web-sites I build are not display-only content but for the most part are front-ends to databases (stock control/document management etc) thus this kind of application seems to me to be very useful.
This may sound mad: but I am writing the whole thing in procedural code, not OO. Partly as a mental exercise and partly because I've just never got my head around OO stuff.
I have seen similar things on the web but none quite do the whole trick.
What I would like from readers is
* a view on whether this kind of thing is useful
* comments: alterations, suggestions etc on the feature set below
* any thoughts on other products that might be out there doing similar things
Once finished I will make the code freely available.
The currently planned feature set is:
* all form data and schema stored in a database supported by the PEAR DB class
* take an existing table and import its schema into the front end.
* build a form from scratch creating a flat table as it's built.
* build a form from a sql query (see the wish list below)
* for each form a list view (in table) can be shown (allowing delete, view and edit of records)
* for each record a new, view and edit form can be rendered
* all html_quickform fieldtypes are supported and all validation rules too (including client side). Additionally password confirmation and uniqueness rules are permitted.
* validation rules and permitted values for autocomplete and select options are stored in separate tables.
* forms are displayed by a simple function call "assemble_form($formid, $mode)" where mode is edit/new/view.
* each field is given a class and a unique id for screen and print manipulation using css
* resultant forms can be displayed using Quick_form's renderers or any template engine supported by quick_form
what i would like to do (but may not have time for:
build a drag and drop representation of the database tables to make form construction easy (this may also provide a good way of linking primary->foreign keys (which I am having a headache about))
Thanks for your feedback
Justin
i am building a web based front end for HTML_QuickForm and would benefit from some input as to features.
The purpose of the exercise is to create a rapid web-application development tool for database driven web-sites. Most of the web-sites I build are not display-only content but for the most part are front-ends to databases (stock control/document management etc) thus this kind of application seems to me to be very useful.
This may sound mad: but I am writing the whole thing in procedural code, not OO. Partly as a mental exercise and partly because I've just never got my head around OO stuff.
I have seen similar things on the web but none quite do the whole trick.
What I would like from readers is
* a view on whether this kind of thing is useful
* comments: alterations, suggestions etc on the feature set below
* any thoughts on other products that might be out there doing similar things
Once finished I will make the code freely available.
The currently planned feature set is:
* all form data and schema stored in a database supported by the PEAR DB class
* take an existing table and import its schema into the front end.
* build a form from scratch creating a flat table as it's built.
* build a form from a sql query (see the wish list below)
* for each form a list view (in table) can be shown (allowing delete, view and edit of records)
* for each record a new, view and edit form can be rendered
* all html_quickform fieldtypes are supported and all validation rules too (including client side). Additionally password confirmation and uniqueness rules are permitted.
* validation rules and permitted values for autocomplete and select options are stored in separate tables.
* forms are displayed by a simple function call "assemble_form($formid, $mode)" where mode is edit/new/view.
* each field is given a class and a unique id for screen and print manipulation using css
* resultant forms can be displayed using Quick_form's renderers or any template engine supported by quick_form
what i would like to do (but may not have time for:
build a drag and drop representation of the database tables to make form construction easy (this may also provide a good way of linking primary->foreign keys (which I am having a headache about))
Thanks for your feedback
Justin
