Prendre un Café

While sadly not being at Symfony Live 2010 with pals, I’m drowning my sorrow into tech tutorials writing.

Sometimes you want to design forms and contextualize them regarding the current user session. For example:

• Manage the display of some fields regarding the user authentication status and credentials;
• Filter some queries used to get the values available in a <select/> tag;
• Allow multiple steps form validation with step state persistence (wizzard);
• etc.

So how can we achieve this without using an evilish sfContext::getInstance()->getUser() call in the configure() method of the form?

Symfony 1.2 1.3 and 1.4 introduced the generation of a project-wide BaseForm class we can use here to setup some convenient methods to allow user setters and getters:

<?php
class BaseForm extends sfFormSymfony
{
  static protected $user = null;
 
  static public function getUser()
  { 
    return self::$user;
  }
 
  static public function getValidUser()
  {
    if (!self::$user instanceof sfBasicSecurityUser)
    {
      throw new RuntimeException('No valid user instance available');
    }
    
    return self::$user;
  }
 
  static public function setUser(sfBasicSecurityUser $user)
  {
    self::$user = $user;
  }
}

Okay, we now can set a user instance as a static property of all available forms within the project, nice. Wait, how the hell will we set the instance, and when?

Symfony dispatch a very useful context.load_factories event when all the factories - including the user one - are instanciated and available in the context. So we can listen to this event and set the user instance to the forms when it’s ready. We’ll do this in the ProjectConfiguration.class.php:

<?php
class ProjectConfiguration extends sfProjectConfiguration
{
  public function setup()
  {
    // ...
    
    $this->dispatcher->connect('context.load_factories', array($this, 'listenToLoadFactoriesEvent'));
  }
 
  public function listenToLoadFactoriesEvent(sfEvent $event)
  {
    BaseForm::setUser($event->getSubject()->getUser());
  }
}

So now we’ve set a static user instance in every form at project configuration time, we can use it in any form.

For example, imagine a form where only authenticated users having an admin credential can see, fill and submit an hypothetic is_published field:

class myForm extends BaseForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    // will throw an exception if no user is available
    $user = self::getValidUser();
    
    $this->setWidgets(array(
      'title' => new sfWidgetFormInputText(),
      'body' => new sfWidgetFormTextarea(),
    ));
    
    $this->setValidators(array(
      'title' => new sfValidatorString(array('min_length' => 5)),
      'body' => new sfValidatorString(array('min_length' => 20)),
    ));
    
    if ($user->isAuthenticated() && $user->hasCredential('admin'))
    {
      $this->widgetSchema['is_published'] = new sfWidgetFormInputCheckbox();
      $this->validatorSchema['is_published'] = new sfValidatorBoolean(array(
        'required' => false,
      ));
    }
    
    // ...
  }
}

Here a basic user won’t see and won’t be able to submit any value for the is_published field. Note that all those changes won’t ever affect the controllers or the model, and the forms will still be easily testable because the forms and the user instance are not tightly coupled.

As a side note, you can also use the form options to eventually pass a user instance and fallback on the static instance in case it’s not available:

class myForm extends BaseForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    // will throw an exception if no user is available
    $user = $this->getOption('user', self::getValidUser());
    
    // ...
  }
}

In a controller, you would use it this way:

<?php 
class fooActions extends sfActions
{
  public function executeBar(sfWebRequest $request)
  {
    $this->form = new myForm(array('user' => $this->getUser()));
    
    // ...
  }
}

A typical unit test suite of the form would be:

$t = new lime_test(2, new lime_output_color());
 
$user = new sfBasicSecurityUser(new sfEventDispatcher(), new sfSessionTestStorage(array(
  'session_path' => sys_get_temp_dir(),
)));
 
$form = new myForm(array('user' => $user));
$t->is(count($form->getWidgetSchema(), 2, '->configure() displays 2 fields when user is not authenticated'));
$user->setAuthenticated(true);
$user->addCredential('admin');
$t->is(count($form->getWidgetSchema(), 3, '->configure() displays 3 fields when user is authenticated and is an admin'));
// ... I'll let you complete the suite by yourself 

Now imagine we want to filter the choices offered by a one to many relationship field of a Doctrine form regarding user credentials:

class ArticleForm extends BaseArticleForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    // will throw an exception if no user is available
    $user = $this->getOption('user', self::getValidUser());
    
    // ...
    
    // Category choices
    $categoryQuery = $this->getUserCategoryQuery($user);
    $this->widgetSchema['category_id'] = new sfWidgetFormDoctrineChoice(array(
      'model' => 'Category',
      'query' => $categoryQuery,
    ));
    $this->validatorSchema['community_id'] = new sfValidatorDoctrineChoice(array(
      'model' => 'Category',
      'query' => $categoryQuery,
    ));
  }
  
  /**
   * Please note that this method would naturally better fit in the model, in the 
   * ArticleTable class; We put this here for conciseness
   */
  protected function getUserCategoryQuery(sfBasicSecurityUser $user)
  {
    $query = Doctrine:getTable('Category')->createQuery('c');
    
    // If user is not an admin, only allow choice of published categories
    if (!$user->hasCredential('admin'))
    {
      $query->where('c.is_published = 1');
    }
    
    return $query;
  }
}

There are many more cool things you can achieve by offering user session access to a form, while keeping all the stuff easy to test.

As usual, if you have a better way, feel free to tell us about it in the comments.

When I do consulting, a lot of people are really surprised that I use Texmate, a popular text editor for OS X, to develop on Symfony projects. Indeed, Textmate is a bit rough around the edge compared to bloated full featured IDE like Eclipse PDT or Netbeans, which are both Java based by the way.

So why using Textmate? No intelligent autocompletion, very basic project management, poor VCS native support, limited index search capabilities… First and while it’s mainly a matter of taste, I mainly use Texmate because it’s fast. Compared to PDT with which you often have to wait a bunch of seconds for the UI to respond on some action you make, mate will react quite instantaneously, and that is making big difference to me. Because when I’m concentrated, focused on some complex problem to solve, I demand my text editor to not make me wait ^[1].

Oppositely, not having full code introspection and autocompletion makes mate making me think about the code I write, instead of just consuming some API passively. I’ve been using phpeclipse and PDT for some years with Symfony, but I think I really began to understand the framework architecture when I switched to mate as my primary editor. Because every time you need to do something with the Symfony API, you have to open the file and read the code: then you learn a lot. And by the time, you end by knowing the core very well, and it’s incredibly efficient. One more time, this is just matter of taste.

Textmate quick tips

So whereas mate can be somewhat limited at first glance, a second look shows it provides some really effective commands to enhance your productivity. Let’s examine some of them.

Searching for a file within the project codebase

Just by pressing ⌘ + t, a snappy filename search window will pop up and allow you to search a file interactively by its name pattern. If you’re using the incredible Quicksilver app for osx, you got the picture.

As Symfony names php files against the class name they contain, finding a class file is just easy as typing the class name in the search field!

Browsing the available functions, classes and methods within a php file

When a php file is opened, the ⌘ + shift + t command will show up the available sections of the document, with a search box you can use to filter their names, still interactively.

Note that this will also work for other file types (like CSS for instance).

Obtening help on native php functions

Move the carret onto some php native function and press ctrl + h and you’ll get the php.net related page in a pop up.

Want the function signature definition in a tooltip, like in PDT or Netbeans? Hit ⌥ + F1 and you’re done.

Using the mate command line utility

Textmate ships with a native command line interface executable called mate you can use from your term:

$ cd /path/to/project
$ mate .

You can also pipe some command to mate to open the output in it:

$ svn diff|mate

Taking part of Mate’s url-scheme capabilities with Symfony

I already blogged about this awesome feature available since Symfony 1.3, one more I won’t ever be able to live without.

Improve your productivity using bundles

The Ack in project bundle

One of the most annoying lack of mate is its internal search engine. It’s really damn slow. The best way to get something decent is to install the Ack in project bundle. You’ll then be able to access a fast and convenient fulltext search engine by pressing the ⌘ + shift + a command.

The ProjectPlus bundle

If you’re looking after a better project browser and some VCS support in mate, you’ll love the ProjectPlus bundle. It will replace the default project drawer by a new one with finder label colors support, file sorting options and VCS icons integration. Give it a try, you won’t be able to live without it.

The Symfony bundle

How could I write a blog post on Textmate and Symfony without mentioning the Symfony bundle? Denderello and contributors did a really good job taking over the original tool, which provides very convenient and effective shortcuts to write Symfony snippets of code quickly.

The GetBundle bundle

Last, if you didn’t find anything new or useful reading this blog entry, you might then be interested by installing the GetBundle bundle which will allow you to browse all available bundles and install any of them in one click!

Conclusion

So these are some of the reasons why I’m using Textmate when developing with Symfony (and other languages too). What are yours?

Symfony 1.3 and 1.4 have been released some days ago in RC2 and you should really take a look at it, because they improve a lot the way you work with the framework, especially the forms one. It’s been a couple of days I started to implement a new bookmarks management feature on a project I’m working on currently, and the new model relationship embedding feature of 1.3’s forms framework just saved me a lot of days.

Here’s a quick and dirty example on how to setup a willingly simplistic bookmarks management system using it

The schema

Here’s the naive Doctrine schema I’ll use for this example:

# in config/doctrine/schema.yml
User:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    name:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
  relations:
    Bookmarks:
      type: many
      class: Bookmark
      local: id
      foreign: user_id
      onDelete: CASCADE
 
Bookmark:
  columns:
    id:
      type: integer(4)
      primary: true
      autoincrement: true
    name:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
    url:
      type: string(255)
      notnull: true
    user_id:
      type: integer(4)
      notnull: true
  relations:
    User:
      type: one
      local: user_id
      foreign: id

As you can see, it’s really naive. Anyway.

Some fixtures

What would be a Doctrine schema without fixtures? Quite nothing I guess, so here we go:

# in data/fixtures/fixtures.yml
User:
  niko:
    name: niko
 
Bookmark:
  niko_bookmark1:
    User: niko
    name: Slashdot
    url: http://slashdot.org/
  niko_bookmark2:
    User: niko
    name: Delicious
    url: http://delicious.com/
  niko_bookmark3:
    User: niko
    name: Digg
    url: http://digg.com/

Building stuff

You guessed it, after having suited the config/databases.yml file to set up a database of our choice, we can now build the database, all the classes we need and load the previously defined fixtures:

$ ./symfony doctrine:build --all --and-load

A basic user’s bookmarks management form

What we want do do now is to manage one User’s bookmarks in a single form. Let’s do it now in a new UserBookmarksForm.class.php file where we’ll build a form extending the autogenerated UserForm one:

<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    // We don't want to edit the User object
    unset($this['name']);
 
    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
}

All the magic is done by calling the embedRelation() method here: all BookmarkForm instances will be embedded and managed automatically in and by our form.

Let’s use a simple controller to manage the form^[1]:

<?php
class testActions extends sfActions
{
  public function executeBookmarks(sfWebRequest $request)
  {
    $this->form = new UserBookmarksForm($user = Doctrine::getTable('User')->findOneByName('niko'));
    if ($request->isMethod('post') && $this->form->bindAndSave($request->getParameter('user_bookmarks')))
    {
      $this->getUser()->setFlash('notice', 'Bookmarks list updated');
      $this->redirect('test/index');
    }
  }
}

And a basic template:

<form action="." method="post">
  <?php echo $form->renderHiddenFields() ?>
  <?php echo $form->renderGlobalErrors() ?>
  <table>
    <?php echo $form ?>
    <tr>
      <td></td>
      <td><input type="submit"/></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>

You should see something like this:

The form is functional, you can edit several bookmarks at one. Neat? But wait, we can’t add a new one!

Embedding a bookmark creation form

Let’s enhance our form by embedding an empty BookmarkForm form instance in order to add a new bookmark:

<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    unset($this['name']);
    
    // Bookmark creation form
    $newBookmarkForm = new BookmarkForm();
    $newBookmarkForm->setDefault('user_id', $this->object->id);
    $this->embedForm('new', $newBookmarkForm);
    
    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
  
  protected function doBind(array $values)
  {
    if ('' === trim($values['new']['name']) && '' === trim($values['new']['url']))
    {
      unset($values['new'], $this['new']);
    }
    
    parent::doBind($values);
  }
}

Here I just override the doBind() method to remove the bookmark creation embedded form if nothing has been submitted by the user in its fields; that’s probably because he just wants to edit existing bookmarks^[2].

By refreshing the page you should now be able to see the new form:

So now you’re able to add a new Bookmark and/or edit existing instances within the same simple form. Neat? Wait, we can’t delete existing bookmarks!

Deleting existing bookmarks

So you would like to have a checkbox next to every existing bookmark embedded form to schedule its deletion on saving the form? Wow, that’s getting tricky, I like that.

The Symfony forms framework has evolved a lot, but what we’re trying to achieve here will involve some fine-tunning. Don’t be too much afraid seeing the code

First, we’ll have to add the checkbox widget to the BookmarkForm form, but only if an existing Bookmark object has been bound to it:

<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/BookmarkForm.class.php
class BookmarkForm extends BaseBookmarkForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    $this->widgetSchema['user_id'] = new sfWidgetFormInputHidden();
    $this->validatorSchema['url'] = new sfValidatorAnd(array(
      new sfValidatorString(array('max_length' => 255)),
      new sfValidatorUrl(),
    ));
    
    if ($this->object->exists())
    {
      $this->widgetSchema['delete'] = new sfWidgetFormInputCheckbox();
      $this->validatorSchema['delete'] = new sfValidatorPass();
    }
  }
}

Refreshing the form page should display something like that:

The UserBookmarksForm now holds this code:

<?php
// lib/form/doctrine/UserBookmarksForm.class.php
class UserBookmarksForm extends UserForm
{
  /**
   * Bookmarks scheduled for deletion
   * @var array
   */
  protected $scheduledForDeletion = array();  
  
  /**
   * Configures the form
   *
   */
  public function configure()
  {
    unset($this['name']);
    
    // Bookmark creation form
    $newBookmarkForm = new BookmarkForm();
    $newBookmarkForm->setDefault('user_id', $this->object->id);
    $this->embedForm('new', $newBookmarkForm);
    
    // Existing bookmark forms
    $this->embedRelation('Bookmarks');
    
    $this->widgetSchema->setNameFormat('user_bookmarks[%s]');
  }
  
  /**
   * Here we just drop the bookmark embedded creation form if no value has been 
   * provided for it (it somewhat simulates a non-required embedded form)
   *
   * @see sfForm::doBind()
   */
  protected function doBind(array $values)
  {
    if ('' === trim($values['new']['name']) && '' === trim($values['new']['url']))
    {
      unset($values['new'], $this['new']);
    }
    
    if (isset($values['Bookmarks']))
    {
      foreach ($values['Bookmarks'] as $i => $bookmarkValues)
      {
        if (isset($bookmarkValues['delete']) && $bookmarkValues['id'])
        {
          $this->scheduledForDeletion[$i] = $bookmarkValues['id'];
        }
      }
    }
    
    parent::doBind($values);
  }
  
  /**
   * Updates object with provided values, dealing with evantual relation deletion
   *
   * @see sfFormDoctrine::doUpdateObject()
   */
  protected function doUpdateObject($values)
  {
    if (count($this->scheduledForDeletion))
    {
      foreach ($this->scheduledForDeletion as $index => $id)
      {
        unset($values['Bookmarks'][$index]);
        unset($this->object['Bookmarks'][$index]);
        Doctrine::getTable('Bookmark')->findOneById($id)->delete();
      }
    }
 
    $this->getObject()->fromArray($values);
  }
  
  /**
   * Saves embedded form objects.
   *
   * @param mixed $con   An optional connection object
   * @param array $forms An array of forms
   */
  public function saveEmbeddedForms($con = null, $forms = null)
  {
    if (null === $con)
    {
      $con = $this->getConnection();
    }
 
    if (null === $forms)
    {
      $forms = $this->embeddedForms;
    }
    
    foreach ($forms as $form)
    {
      if ($form instanceof sfFormObject)
      {
        if (!in_array($form->getObject()->getId(), $this->scheduledForDeletion))
        {
          $form->saveEmbeddedForms($con);
          $form->getObject()->save($con);
        }
      }
      else
      {
        $this->saveEmbeddedForms($con, $form->getEmbeddedForms());
      }
    }
  }
}

The code should be self-explanatory… or not. But anyway, you should now be able to add a new bookmark and delete existing ones as well, in a single form and process, and we’re still using the very same controller from the beginning!

Okay, let’s admit it, we’re reaching the limits of Symfony and probably those of my knowledge of it as well, but… IT WORKS.

But, what about the templating?

As of now we’ve used the convenient <?php echo $form ?> trick, but we now want to have full fine-grained control over the way our embedded form fields will look like.

Let’s update the form template accordingly:

<form action="." method="post">
  <?php echo $form->renderHiddenFields() ?>
  <?php echo $form->renderGlobalErrors() ?>
  <!-- Embedded new bookmark form -->
  <fieldset>
    <legend><?php echo __('Create a new bookmark') ?></legend>
    <?php echo $form['new']->renderError() ?>
    <div class="form-row">
      <?php echo $form['new']['name']->renderLabel() ?>
      <div class="form-field">
        <?php echo $form['new']['name']->render() ?>
        <?php echo $form['new']['name']->renderError() ?>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="form-row">
      <?php echo $form['new']['url']->renderLabel() ?>
      <div class="form-field">
        <?php echo $form['new']['url']->render() ?>
        <?php echo $form['new']['url']->renderError() ?>
      </div>
    </div>
  </fieldset>
  <!-- /Embedded new bookmark form -->
  <!-- Embedded existing bookmark forms -->
  <?php foreach ($form['Bookmarks'] as $i => $eForm): ?>
    <fieldset>
      <legend><?php echo sprintf(__('Edit bookmark #%d'), $i+1) ?></legend>
      <?php echo $eForm->renderError() ?>
      <div class="form-row">
        <?php echo $eForm['name']->renderLabel() ?>
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['name']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['name']->renderError() ?>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="form-row">
        <?php echo $eForm['url']->renderLabel() ?>
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['url']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['url']->renderError() ?>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="form-row">
        <div class="form-field">
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->render() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->renderError() ?>
          <?php echo $eForm['delete']->renderLabel(__('Delete this bookmark')) ?>
        </div>
      </div>
    </fieldset>
  <?php endforeach; ?>
  <!-- /Embedded existing bookmark forms -->
  <input type="submit" value="<?php echo __('Update your bookmarks') ?>"/>
</form>

Now you can really control the semantics of the HTML code of the form, field by field.

As always, if you have better solutions in mind, feel free to post them in the comments.

I’ve just stumbled upon a nice new feature of Symfony 1.3, the ability to open any linked file within standard exception page with the text editor of your choice, at least if it provides an url scheme/protocol to open them. Texmate provides natively this feature, so let’s see how to configure a symfony project to allow its files to be opened directly in textmate when encountering a stack trace.

In the config/ folder of the project, create a settings.yml file with this content:

dev: #yeah, we never know
  .settings:
    file_link_format: "txmt://open?url=file://%f&line=%l"

That’s it. Now any standard exception page (in dev environment only, right?) will provide a txmt:// link to every PHP file listed in the stack trace. And at the correct line number. Neat.