[fw-general] custom validation class

[David Mintz]

I am trying to write a class that extends Zend_Validate_Abstract. Its
purpose is to determine whether the date and time supplied is or at least
two business days away from now, or time(). (A lot of heavy lifting there,
but I am recycling/wrapping an old class that has been tested thoroughly,
and works.)

I would like its isValid() method to take two arguments, a string date and
string time which we will turn  to a Unix timestamp with strtotime() or else
throw an exception. Or it could take an array with indices 'date' and
'time', I don't care.

So I studied the example at
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.filter.input.html, where it says

$validators = array(
    'password' => array(
        'StringEquals',
        'fields' => array('password1', 'password2')
    )
);

and then shows you how to put it all together.

So I try this, inside the validate() method of my model, which extends
Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract:

        require('lib/validators/AdvanceNotice.php');
        require('Zend/Filter/Input.php');

        $validators = array(
            'date' => array(
                new AdvanceNotice(),
                'fields' =>array('date','time'),
            )
        );

        $filters = array(
            '*' => 'StringTrim',
        );

        $input = new
Zend_Filter_Input($filters,$validators,$this->toArray());

Now here's the part I don't get. When the input validation fails, it all
works just fine. When it succeeds, however, it seems that the
Zend_Filter_Input instance's isValid() calls my model's isValid() not once
but three times. The first time through it passes it this array (when I use
this as test input):

Array
(
    [date] => 2007-09-13
    [time] => 10:00:00
)

and the second and third times, it passes each of those strings '2007-09-13'
and '10:00:00', respectively. If it would just not do that, all would be
peachy-keen. Am i doing somethiing wrong or have I discovered a bug?

Thought experiment:  would the outcome be different if my class
implemented Zend_Validate_Interface
instead of extending Zend_Validate_Abstract?

Thanks a million,


-- 
David Mintz
http://davidmintz.org/

The subtle source is clear and bright
The tributary streams flow through the darkness