While working through our first project we ran into issues with this structure of forms.  I didn’t run into any problems but in order to stop the complaints from the designers in our office I decided to work on getting Zend Form to generate forms in the style laid out at A List Apart.

I didn’t figure this would really be all that difficult because most of the documentation for Zend Framework fairly good.  Little did I know that the documentation and examples for Zend Form with Zend Config were fairly hard to find.  When I did find documentation the decorators stilled confused me for a while.  Then everything just seemed to click one day and I was successful in getting exactly what I wanted.  Now I don’t have designers complaining anymore because they have forms structured exactly the way they want(Sorry Rob ).  In order to get the results I wanted I ended up with a form defined in my ini file like the following:

[signInForm]
form.id = "signInForm"
form.method = "post"
form.action = "/sign-in/"

; Form Decorators
form.disableLoadDefaultDecorators = true
form.decorators.formElements.decorator = "FormElements"
form.decorators.description.decorator = "Description"
form.decorators.form.decorator = "Form"

; Global Element Decorators
form.elementDecorators.decorator = "ViewHelper"
form.elementDecorators.error.decorator = "Errors"
form.elementDecorators.description.decorator = "Description"
form.elementDecorators.label.decorator = "Label"
form.elementDecorators.formElements.decorator = "HtmlTag"
form.elementDecorators.formElements.options.tag = "li"

; Group Decorators
form.displayGroupDecorators.decorator = "FormElements"
form.displayGroupDecorators.formElements.decorator = "HtmlTag"
form.displayGroupDecorators.formElements.options.tag = "ol"
form.displayGroupDecorators.fieldset.decorator = "Fieldset"

; Form Groups
form.displayGroups.signinGroup.elements.username    = "username"
form.displayGroups.signinGroup.elements.password    = "password"
form.displayGroups.signinGroup.elements.rememberMe  = "rememberMe"

form.displayGroups.submitGroup.elements.submit = "submit"

; username element
form.elements.username.type = "text"
form.elements.username.options.validators.notempty.validator = "NotEmpty"
form.elements.username.options.validators.notempty.breakChainOnFailure = true
form.elements.username.options.validators.strlen.validator = "StringLength"
form.elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.min = 6
form.elements.username.options.validators.strlen.options.max = 20
form.elements.username.options.required = true
form.elements.username.options.label = "Username:"

; password element
form.elements.password.type ="password"
form.elements.password.options.validators.notempty.validator = "NotEmpty"
form.elements.password.options.validators.notempty.breakChainOnFailure = true
form.elements.password.options.validators.strlen.validator = "StringLength"
form.elements.password.options.validators.strlen.options.min = "6"
form.elements.password.options.required = true
form.elements.password.options.label = "Password:"

; remember me element
form.elements.rememberMe.type = "checkbox"
form.elements.rememberMe.options.label = "Remember Me?"

; login button element
form.elements.submit.type = "button"
form.elements.submit.options.name = "SignIn"
form.elements.submit.options.value = "Sign In"
form.elements.submit.options.label = "Sign In"

I hope this helps someone else as I could not find a good solid example of how to get this working. If anyone has any feedback on a better way of handling this let me know in the comments.
Thanks,
Chris

Update
I updated “FieldSet” to “Fieldset” as that has changed since I wrote this post.  Thanks for the message about the error!
Chris

The following is probably revision 2 of the original idea. I realized after writing it the first time I should have made it more generic so I could use it on multiple fields without changing anything except the properties in the config ini for each form field.

To add the validator to a field using Zend Config you would do the following:

        form.elements.email.options.validators.uniqueField.validator = "uniqueField"
        form.elements.email.options.validators.uniqueField.options.modelName = "Notification"
        form.elements.email.options.validators.uniqueField.options.fieldname = "notification_email"

< ?php
class Robyn_Validate_UniqueField extends Zend_Validate_Abstract
{
    /**
     * @var String
     */
    const NOT_UNIQUE = 'error';

    /**
     * @var String
     */
    protected $_modelName = 'User';

    /**
     * @var String
     */
    protected $_fieldName = 'user_username';

    /**
     * @var array
     */
    protected $_messageTemplates = array(
                                         self::NOT_UNIQUE => 'The data given is not unique.'
                                         );

    /**
     * Sets validator options
     *
     * @param  string $modelName
     * @param  string $fieldName
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct($modelName = 'User', $fieldName = 'user_username')
    {
        $this->setModelName($modelName);
        $this->setFieldName($fieldName);
    }

    /**
     * Defined by Zend_Validate_Interface
     *
     * Returns true if and only if the email address is found to NOT have a match in the fieldname in the model specified
     *
     * @param Array $value
     * @param Array $request
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function isValid($value, $request = null)
    {
        // Set the value
        $value = (string) $value;
        $this->_setValue($value);

        // Get our model and do a search for that username
        $table = new $this->_modelName();
        $result = $table->fetchAll($table->select()->where($this->_fieldName . ' = ?', $value))->toArray();

        // Check to see if we got any results
        if (count($result) == 0) {
            return true;
        }

        $this->_error(self::NOT_UNIQUE);
        return false;
    }

    /**
     * Set the model name.
     *
     * @param string $modelName
     * @return Zend_Validate_UniqueUsername Provides a fluent interface
     */
    public function setModelName($modelName)
    {
        $this->_modelName = $modelName;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Set the field name.
     *
     * @param string $fieldName
     * @return Zend_Validate_UniqueUsername Provides a fluent interface
     */
    public function setFieldName($fieldName)
    {
        $this->_fieldName = $fieldName;

        return $this;
    }
}

The modifications were pretty basic in that the code was tracking ALL requests and there are a few requests that I did not want to track(namely Ajax and page reloads).  By not tracking these requests I feel I get a much more accurate representation of the path the user is following through the application.  The one thing I am still yet to conquer is how to find out if a requests is triggering a 404 page and if so to not track it.  I’m not sure that it is even possible because of when the helper is triggered but I haven’t delved very deep either(just something I want to put in at some point but if you know how let me know in the comments).So without further ado the code:

<?php
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Session_Namespace');
/**
* This helper tracks the user's browsing history
*
* @copyright 2008 Jani Hartikainen <www.codeutopia.net>
* @author Jani Hartikainen <firstname at codeutopia net>
* @author Chris Antoine <chris@spinweb.net>(Modifications)
*/
class SoulOpinion_Action_Helper_History extends Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_Abstract
{
/**
* @var Zend_Session_Namespace
*/
private $_namespace;

/**
* How many history URLs to track?
*
* @var int
*/
private $_trackAmount = 0;

/**
* Track Ajax Requests?
*
* @var int
*/
private $_ajax = 0;

/**
* Current URL
*
* @var string
*/
private $_currentUrl = null;

/**
* @param int $trackAmount [optional] How many history URLs to track
*/
public function __construct($trackAmount = 5)
{
$this->setTrackAmount($trackAmount);

$this->_initSession();
}

/**
* Initialize the history from session
*/
private function _initSession()
{
$this->_namespace = new Zend_Session_Namespace('Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_History');

// Break out if we don't want to track the request
if ($this->trackableRequest() == false) {
return true;
}

if (!is_array($this->_namespace->history)) {
$this->_namespace->history = array();

if(!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'])) {
array_unshift($this->_namespace->history, $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);
}
} else {
array_splice($this->_namespace->history, $this->_trackAmount);
}
}

public function preDispatch()
{
$urlHelper = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('Url');
$this->_currentUrl = $urlHelper->url();

// Break out if we don't want to track the request
if ($this->trackableRequest() == false) {
return true;
}

if (!is_array($this->_namespace->history)) {
$this->_namespace->history = array();
}

array_unshift($this->_namespace->history, $this->_currentUrl);
}

/**
* Set how many history URLs to track
*
* @param int $trackAmount
*/
public function setTrackAmount($trackAmount)
{
$this->_trackAmount = $trackAmount;
}

/**
* Redirects the browser back in history
*
* @param int $amount How many URLs to go back
*/
public function goBack($amount = 1)
{
Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('Redirector')
->setPrependBase(false)
->gotoUrl($this->_namespace->history[$amount]);
}

/**
* Returns an URL from history
*
* @param int $amount How many URLs to go back
* @return string
*/
public function getPreviousUrl($amount = 1)
{
return $this->_namespace->history[$amount];
}

/**
* Return all previous URLs
*
* @return array
*/
public function getArray()
{
return $this->_namespace->history;
}

public function getName()
{
return 'History';
}

/**
* Validate that we want to track the request
*
* @return Boolean
*/
private function trackableRequest()
{
// Decide whether or not we should track Ajax Requests
if ($this->_ajax == 0) {
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Controller_Request_Http');
$request = new Zend_Controller_Request_Http();

if ($request->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
return false;
}
}

// Now we are going to verify the user didn't just reload the page or click the same link.
// No reason to track page reloads.
if ($this->_currentUrl == $this->_namespace->history[0]) {
return false;
}

// Need to come up with a way to check for a 404 error so we don't track bad requests.

return true;
}
}