Chris,
On 19/02/07, Christopher H. Laco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Is anyone doing complete localization using FormBuilder or HTML::Widget?
I'm stuggling with probably the same things everyone struggles with when
it comes to forms.
FormBuilder is nice when it comes to localizing the messages via
messages.$lang. It totally sucks when it comes to localizing the form
labels themselves. It looks like I either have to manually loop through
teh fields and localize the labels, or use a different .frm config for
each language...which means duplicating major parts of the config.
HTML::Widget seems to be even worse at getting its config from an
external source rather than creating forms in code.
What is the sanest way people have found to do localization without
having to do it in 2-3 different places (code to alter labels,
messages.$lang, etc)?
It seems that forms suck, and form tools really haven't quite gotten
over the hurdle yet in situations like this.
I haven't yet publicised this anywhere than the html-widget list, but
I've been working on a html-widget replacement, named HTML::FormFu.
The main reason I've been quiet is mainly because, of the little
documentation there is, some is now incorrect and most still refers to
html-widget. - So consider the code and test suite the primary
documentation for now.
I've just added L10N to it, using Locale::Maketext, but you can
provide your own L10N object or class if you wish.
At the moment, it only has an en.pm locale file.
To localise labels, comments etc, I would suggest using the same
technique as you would to localise anything else:
$field->label( $c->loc('name') );
instead of:
$field->label('name');
To organise the L10N texts, you could either let formfu localise error
messages, etc from it's own locale files and set your own labels using
`$c->loc`.
Or you could merge the contents of formfu's own locale files into your
own, then tell formfu to use Cat's own localize() method. (assuming
you're using the Catalyst-Plugin-I18N).
The catalyst controller has an option for handling this automatically
`localize_from_context`.
If you want formfu to use it's own L10N files, you can set the
controller option `localize_from_context` to tell it to get the
language from `$c->languages`.
The formfu code should be considered alpha, as it's still changing to
an extent, but it is working and I'm using it in a few different
projects and enjoying using it.
The code is in svn at:
http://html-formfu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
The Cat controller / actions
http://catalyst-controller-html-formfu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
DBIx::Class integration (replacement for DBIx::Class::HTMLWidget)
http://dbix-class-formfu.googlecode.com/svn/
A couple of extra form elements which use the Dojo library:
http://html-formfu-dojo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
There's also an application which lets you test different css
stylesheets again forms, to quickly prototype different layouts:
http://www.fireartist.com/html-formfu-cssapp/
In a very quick summary, I would describe it's main advantages over
html-widget as being:
* uses TT templates, so you can easily change the rendered xhtml on a
per-project basis
* set $field->filename() to override the rendering on a per-field basis
* the old result objects are broken out into seperate result + render
object to allow a backend other than TT to be used
* more seperation of form fields and other non-field 'elements', such
as fieldsets
* load form settings / elements / constraints / filters from config
files, allowing easy setting of global defaults, and allows forms to
be changed without touching code
* cleaner xhtml, more customisable dom id generation, cleaner css classnames
* can set element default values, form-wide, for individual field types, e.g.
$form->element_defaults({ Textarea => { cols => 20 }, Text => {
size => 20 } });
will automatically pass these defaults when the relevant element type
is created.
And of course, these can be set via a config file.
...well, that's all I can think of off-hand
If you're interested in experimenting with it, you're welcome to ask
questions on the html-widget list.
Cheers,
Carl
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