zeam.form.base 1.4.1

Grok based form framework

Summary

zeam.form.base is a form framework for Zope. It has common goals and purposes with formlib or z3c.form but tries to:

• define small sane and reusable components : you don’t need a full flavored form to render and display only few widgets in your application,

• be easily customizable without using hundreds of adapters: most of settings are set with properties on your form/fields,

• prevent ZCML declarations by using Grok to register the few needed adapters (widgets and widgets value extractors),

• always keep the context untouched: the form works on a content that can be something else than the context, it can even be a dictionnary. That means everywhere in the form, including in widgets, and actions, you can either access the context as the real context of the form, and have a way to access the content that the form is working on. This helps greatly if you have complicated widgets working, including when they are embedded in other widgets (like in a list or a table),

• let people easily change form templates, by using megrok.pagetemplate by default, selecting which fields goes where they want,

• let people define easily their widgets, and use them,

• be able to create complex forms, like composed or table forms, where each form can modify the data it needs without having to hack-o-refresh other sub-forms: all actions are executed before any widget compute its value to render,

By default, it is unware of things like Zope-schema. Generating fields from a Zope-schema would be done with the help of zeam.form.ztk.

It work with Python 2.6, 2.7 (tested in Zope 2.13 and Grok 1.5). Older versions works for older versions of Zope 2 and Grok.

Example

Let’s define a quick example. Actions can be defined standalone:

from zeam.form.base import Action, SUCCESS

class MailAction(Action):

   def available(self, form):
       return form.context.haveMailHost()

   def __call__(self, form):
       # Send a mail
       form.status = u"Mail sent"
       return SUCCESS

And included as attributes to the form:

class MailForm(Form):
   label = u"Send a mail"
   description = u"to people"
   fields = Fields(Field(u'Name'), Field(u'E-mail'), Field(u'Message'))
   actions = Actions(MailAction(u'Send mail'))

(A decoractor can be used on a form method as well if you don’t need lot of code for your action).

For more information

You can refer to the functional and doctest included in the package. Since it tries to be composed of small components, there is many way to put them together.

Changelog

1.4.1 (2020-08-25)

• Fixed ‘url’ method as it was faulty. Added tests accordingly.

1.4.0 (2020-08-20)

• Python3.6+ only. Python2 support was dropped.

1.3.2 (2019-01-15)

• Added the defaultFactory handling (needs testing)

• Updated to newer versions of the GTK packages

• Switch tests to zope.testbrowser.wsgi

1.3.1 (2012/11/19)

• Improve actions htmlAttributes to reflect fields API.

• Improve and fix constrainValue validation on fields.

1.3 (2012/10/12)

• Fields now support more options. There is a constrainValue method that can be used in addition to validate (to be compatible with zope.schema fields). An option interface had been added as well, and can be used by other zeam.form components to group fields.

• Fields can be created with more options given through their constructor.

• Fields and widget now support extra htmlAttributes. They can be given to the field constructor, and are rendered automatically by the widget.

• Actions supports htmlAttributes too.

• Update translations.

• Add some backward compatiblity helpers.

1.2.3 (2012/09/24)

• grokcore.chameleon is able to negociate i18n by himself. Remove the i18nLanguage attribute that was an hack.

• Refactor how the widgets and extractors are created. This is now done via the form data, and is customizable.

1.2.2 (2012/05/02)

• Update to use the latest grokcore.component and grokcore.view.

1.2.1 (2012/04/27)

• Improve the sorting support on components (fields, actions, widgets).

• Add a delete method to the data manager.

• Now use grokcore.chameleon instead of megrok.chameleon.

• Add the missing static to a form default_namespace template.

1.2 (2011/11/08)

• This version no longer support Zope 2 before 2.12.

• And an helper to know if a field is hidden (so you don’t display the label).

• Support a callable to know if a field is required (the callable takes the form as parameter).

• Add the HTML 5 attribute required by default in the widgets. Use novalidate attribute on your form tag if you want to disable it.

• Improve error reporting. A widget can now return a collection of error (usefull is the widget is composed of more sub-widgets).

• Extend API for dataValidator and widget prepareRequestValue.

• Add support for CompoundActions (actions implemented by different action collections).

• updateActions now return the form on which the action have been executed. This is usefull in case of sub-forms.

1.1 (2011/02/01)

• zeam.form.base now uses the latest grokcore.view template grokker.

• Dependencies have been updated for the latest grokcore and megrok packages.

1.0 (2010/10/19)

• Translation have been completed and reviewed in Dutch, French and German.

• An infrastructure to write generic validatators on all fields have been added (dataValidators on a FormData).

• Field getDefaultValue and defaultValue now take a parameter, the form itself. It allows you to compute a default value that needs the context.

• Some extraction issues have been fixed: a field which is not available is no longer extracte and the extractData method can now be called multiple times with different collection of fields.

• Some options have been added to Actions: a postOnly flag that requires the form to be submitted via the POST method only, and a description and accesskey properties. The postOnly option is also available at the form level.

• Actions return a status flag for the success or the failure.

• Some helpers have been added to a form: haveRequiredFields and htmlId. Default forms as well have a static attribute like Grok views do.

• Changed the attribute formError to formErrors which now a list of errors instead of a single error. Because it’s possible to have more then one main error in a form (eg. invariants).

• Changed the formtemplate to display the new formError in an <ul> <li> structure instead of the … tal:replace … for a single error.

• Added the sort and reverse methods on the Collection component. Tests have been added accordingly.

• Provided a cmp function to order components in a Collection. This is now thoroughly tested and demonstrated.

1.0rc2 (2010/07/16)

• The marker to allow extraction affect as well processing them redisplaying values coming from the request.

• DataManager API is exported by default.

• DecoratedAction can be extended. You can provide your own implementation with the factory parameter of the decorator.

1.0rc1 (2010/07/05)

• The ExtractData method has been splitted in two, with the introduction of the validateData method, that allows the form to override the global form validation process. This lets the fields validation at the very same place, and only involves the general form validation process.

• Created a new marker subclass for the form modes. This marker class defines a boolean allowing or not the extraction of the affected component, while the form is processed. Added tests for it.

• Look for entry points zeam.form.components before adapting items into components in collection. This let you register adapters before they are used.

1.0b4 (2010/06/22)

• Now the ‘Errors’ class can be used as a logical grouping of ‘Error’ and it stacks, in this case. Added tests to demonstrate and fix the behavior.

1.0b3 (2010/06/04)

• Fixed the way the identifiers are generated. Now, empty prefixes are no longer generating malformed ids/names. Added tests to fix that behavior.

1.0b2 (2010/05/13)

• Fix a bug in FormData initialization.

• Add a NO_CHANGE marker.

1.0b1 (2010/05/03)

• Initial release