--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/doc/book/en/devweb/edition/form.rst Tue May 04 11:09:18 2010 +0200
@@ -0,0 +1,220 @@
+HTML form construction
+----------------------
+
+CubicWeb provides the somewhat usual form / field / widget / renderer abstraction
+to provide generic building blocks which will greatly help you in building forms
+properly integrated with CubicWeb (coherent display, error handling, etc...),
+while keeping things as flexible as possible.
+
+A ``form`` basically only holds a set of ``fields``, and has te be bound to a
+``renderer`` which is responsible to layout them. Each field is bound to a
+``widget`` that will be used to fill in value(s) for that field (at form
+generation time) and 'decode' (fetch and give a proper Python type to) values
+sent back by the browser.
+
+The ``field`` should be used according to the type of what you want to edit.
+E.g. if you want to edit some date, you'll have to use the
+:class:`cubicweb.web.formfields.DateField`. Then you can choose among multiple
+widgets to edit it, for instance :class:`cubicweb.web.formwidgets.TextInput` (a
+bare text field), :class:`~cubicweb.web.formwidgets.DateTimePicker` (a simple
+calendar) or even :class:`~cubicweb.web.formwidgets.JQueryDatePicker` (the JQuery
+calendar). You can of course also write your own widget.
+
+
+.. automodule:: cubicweb.web.views.autoform
+
+
+Example of ad-hoc fields form
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+We want to define a form doing something else than editing an entity. The idea is
+to propose a form to send an email to entities in a resultset which implements
+:class:`IEmailable`. Let's take a simplified version of what you'll find in
+:mod:`cubicweb.web.views.massmailing`.
+
+Here is the source code:
+
+.. sourcecode:: python
+
+ def sender_value(form):
+ return '%s <%s>' % (form._cw.user.dc_title(), form._cw.user.get_email())
+
+ def recipient_choices(form, field):
+ return [(e.get_email(), e.eid)
+ for e in form.cw_rset.entities()
+ if e.get_email()]
+
+ def recipient_value(form):
+ return [e.eid for e in form.cw_rset.entities()
+ if e.get_email()]
+
+ class MassMailingForm(forms.FieldsForm):
+ __regid__ = 'massmailing'
+
+ needs_js = ('cubicweb.widgets.js',)
+ domid = 'sendmail'
+ action = 'sendmail'
+
+ sender = ff.StringField(widget=TextInput({'disabled': 'disabled'}),
+ label=_('From:'),
+ value=sender_value)
+
+ recipient = ff.StringField(widget=CheckBox(),
+ label=_('Recipients:'),
+ choices=recipient_choices,
+ value=recipients_value)
+
+ subject = ff.StringField(label=_('Subject:'), max_length=256)
+
+ mailbody = ff.StringField(widget=AjaxWidget(wdgtype='TemplateTextField',
+ inputid='mailbody'))
+
+ form_buttons = [ImgButton('sendbutton', "javascript: $('#sendmail').submit()",
+ _('send email'), 'SEND_EMAIL_ICON'),
+ ImgButton('cancelbutton', "javascript: history.back()",
+ stdmsgs.BUTTON_CANCEL, 'CANCEL_EMAIL_ICON')]
+
+Let's detail what's going on up there. Our form will hold four fields:
+
+* a sender field, which is disabled and will simply contains the user's name and
+ email
+
+* a recipients field, which will be displayed as a list of users in the context
+ result set with checkboxes so user can still choose who will receive his mailing
+ by checking or not the checkboxes. By default all of them will be checked since
+ field's value return a list containing same eids as those returned by the
+ vocabulary function.
+
+* a subject field, limited to 256 characters (hence we know a
+ :class:`~cubicweb.web.formwidgets.TextInput` will be used, as explained in
+ :class:`~cubicweb.web.formfields.StringField`)
+
+* a mailbody field. This field use an ajax widget, defined in `cubicweb.widgets.js`,
+ and whose definition won't be shown here. Notice though that we tell this form
+ need this javascript file by using `needs_js`
+
+Last but not least, we add two buttons control: one to post the form using
+javascript (`$('#sendmail')` being the jQuery call to get the element with DOM id
+set to 'sendmail', which is our form DOM id as specified by its `domid`
+attribute), another to cancel the form which will go back to the previous page
+using another javascript call. Also we specify an image to use as button icon as a
+resource identifier (see :ref:`external_resources`) given as last argument to
+:class:`cubicweb.web.formwidgets.ImgButton`.
+
+To see this form, we still have to wrap it in a view. This is pretty simple:
+
+.. sourcecode:: python
+
+ class MassMailingFormView(form.FormViewMixIn, EntityView):
+ __regid__ = 'massmailing'
+ __select__ = implements(IEmailable) & authenticated_user()
+
+ def call(self):
+ form = self._cw.vreg['forms'].select('massmailing', self._cw,
+ rset=self.cw_rset)
+ self.w(form.render())
+
+As you see, we simply define a view with proper selector so it only apply to a
+result set containing :class:`IEmailable` entities, and so that only users in the
+managers or users group can use it. Then in the `call()` method for this view we
+simply select the above form and write what its `.render()` method returns.
+
+When this form is submitted, a controller with id 'sendmail' will be called (as
+specified using `action`). This controller will be responsible to actually send
+the mail to specified recipients.
+
+Here is what it looks like:
+
+.. sourcecode:: python
+
+ class SendMailController(Controller):
+ __regid__ = 'sendmail'
+ __select__ = (authenticated_user() &
+ match_form_params('recipient', 'mailbody', 'subject'))
+
+ def publish(self, rset=None):
+ body = self._cw.form['mailbody']
+ subject = self._cw.form['subject']
+ eids = self._cw.form['recipient']
+ # eids may be a string if only one recipient was specified
+ if isinstance(eids, basestring):
+ rset = self._cw.execute('Any X WHERE X eid %(x)s', {'x': eids})
+ else:
+ rset = self._cw.execute('Any X WHERE X eid in (%s)' % (','.join(eids)))
+ recipients = list(rset.entities())
+ msg = format_mail({'email' : self._cw.user.get_email(),
+ 'name' : self._cw.user.dc_title()},
+ recipients, body, subject)
+ if not self._cw.vreg.config.sendmails([(msg, recipients]):
+ msg = self._cw._('could not connect to the SMTP server')
+ else:
+ msg = self._cw._('emails successfully sent')
+ raise Redirect(self._cw.build_url(__message=msg))
+
+
+The entry point of a controller is the publish method. In that case we simply get
+back post values in request's `form` attribute, get user instances according
+to eids found in the 'recipient' form value, and send email after calling
+:func:`format_mail` to get a proper email message. If we can't send email or
+if we successfully sent email, we redirect to the index page with proper message
+to inform the user.
+
+Also notice that our controller has a selector that deny access to it
+to anonymous users (we don't want our instance to be used as a spam
+relay), but also checks if the expected parameters are specified in
+forms. That avoids later defensive programming (though it's not enough
+to handle all possible error cases).
+
+To conclude our example, suppose we wish a different form layout and that existent
+renderers are not satisfying (we would check that first of course :). We would then
+have to define our own renderer:
+
+.. sourcecode:: python
+
+ class MassMailingFormRenderer(formrenderers.FormRenderer):
+ __regid__ = 'massmailing'
+
+ def _render_fields(self, fields, w, form):
+ w(u'<table class="headersform">')
+ for field in fields:
+ if field.name == 'mailbody':
+ w(u'</table>')
+ w(u'<div id="toolbar">')
+ w(u'<ul>')
+ for button in form.form_buttons:
+ w(u'<li>%s</li>' % button.render(form))
+ w(u'</ul>')
+ w(u'</div>')
+ w(u'<div>')
+ w(field.render(form, self))
+ w(u'</div>')
+ else:
+ w(u'<tr>')
+ w(u'<td class="hlabel">%s</td>' % self.render_label(form, field))
+ w(u'<td class="hvalue">')
+ w(field.render(form, self))
+ w(u'</td></tr>')
+
+ def render_buttons(self, w, form):
+ pass
+
+We simply override the `_render_fields` and `render_buttons` method of the base form renderer
+to arrange fields as we desire it: here we'll have first a two columns table with label and
+value of the sender, recipients and subject field (form order respected), then form controls,
+then a div containing the textarea for the email's content.
+
+To bind this renderer to our form, we should add to our form definition above:
+
+.. sourcecode:: python
+
+ form_renderer_id = 'massmailing'
+
+API
+~~~
+
+.. automodule:: cubicweb.web.formfields
+.. automodule:: cubicweb.web.formwidgets
+.. automodule:: cubicweb.web.views.forms
+.. automodule:: cubicweb.web.views.formrenderers
+
+.. Example of entity fields form