A PHP and jQuery form creation and validation library available? [closed]

Answer 1

An option I have come across is jFormer, but it has a very short history and the PHP code is less than desirable with a massive 3000 line file full of multiple classes. It doesn't take a modular approach.

Answer 2

Whilst looking through the PEAR repository today I noticed that HTML_QuickForm2 has made a new release that now supports client side validation as well. It does not use jQuery though and they have written their own JS framework for the job.

Answer 3

UPDATED for 2017

Agile UI is a PHP UI component library (and successor of atk4.3) including things like:

• Interractive Forms
• CRUD
• Grid
• Menus
• Paginators
• see more at http://ui.agiletoolkit.org/demos/index.php

All components have a consistent and simple PHP interface:

$form = new \atk4\ui\Form();
$layout->add($form);
$form->setModel(new Country($db));

If you prefer CRUD just use \atk4\ui\CRUD. Agile UI also offers tools for adding custom components.

Comparing with alternative software:

• Outputs HTML for form $form->render() or for entire web app.
• Automatically styled with Semantic UI
• Server-side validation, displays errors inline.
• Form layouts
• Includes support jQuery UI.
• Stores data through Agile Data, SQL, NoSQL
• Support custom HTML templates
• Open-source and licensed under MIT

Answer 4

Maybe you can use the Symfony framework. It provides a Model-View-Controller layer and automatic form generation out of the model. There are many validation options. But I think there is some modification needed to integrate JQuery client-side validation too.

Answer 5

You can use ValidForm Builder. It matches perfect to your requirements: With it you can define Forms with validation rules in PHP, and it generates the Forms with jQuery and client side validation.

Feature List (taken from their site):

• The API generates XHTML Strict 1.0 compliant code.
• Field validation on the client side to minimize traffic overhead.
• Field validation on the server side to enforce validation rules and prevent tempering with the form through SQL injection.
• Client side validation displays inline to improve user satisfaction. No more annoying popups that don't really tell you anything.
• Easy creation of complex form structures.
• Uses the popular jQuery Javascript library for DOM manipulation.
• Completely customizable using CSS.
• Automatic creation of field summaries for form mailers in both HTML and plain text.
• It's open source and therefore completely free (here's the GitHub repo)!

Answer 6

I just stumbled upon a jQuery plugin called jquery-ahm. It moves the validation logic to the server, but executes it at the client with JavaScript. At the bottom of the page you see an example for form validation.

Html markup:

<form id="form" action="/a.form" method="post" class="ahm">
<p>Name</p>
<input name="name" id="name" value="" type="text">
<p>Email</p>
<input name="email" id="email" value="" type="text">
<p>Password</p>
<input name="password" id="password" value="" type="text">
<br><input value="Submit Form" type="submit">
</form>

PHP code:

<?php
// catch errors
foreach (array("name", "email", "password") as $key) {
    if (empty($_POST[$key])) {
        $error["#$key/addClass"] = "error";
        $error["#$key/after"]    = "<span class="error">Please enter $key</span>";  
    }
}

// get response
if (!empty($error)) {
    $reset["input.error/removeClass"] = "error";
    $reset["span.error/remove"]       = "";
    $response = $reset + $error;    // reset errors before applying new ones
} else {
    $response["#form/replaceWith"] = "<strong>Form successfully submitted</strong>";
}

// return response
return $response;
?>

Result: