Introducing: Zend Controller Scaffolding

In the last couple of weeks I came across the idea of building a little component for scaffolding in Zend Framework. After playing around with this idea a little I came up with an Zend_Controller_Scaffolding object, which extends the Zend_Controller_Action object.

It takes any Zend_Db_Table_Abstract object and generates create and update forms using Zend_Form and displays them in the Controller. The component is very easy to use, as this example shows:

class SomeController extends WW_Controller_Scaffolding {
    public function init() {
        $this->setScaffolding(new ZendDbTableModel(), $options);
    }
}

You now have access to the following actions of the controller: some/create some/edit some/delete and some/index (some/list). They handle all your model editing dreams.

All you have to own is the WW_Controller_Scaffolding Library Class and a folder of scaffolding view templates both of which are bundled in an archive you can download.

Download

• Download Version 0.5.5

Changes

• 0.5.5: Put Component into own Namespace (WW = Whitewashing). Make it possible to hide fields in the list via the options. Allow to specify scaffolding view scripts folder via options.

Install & Usage

Untar the two folders include/ and views/ into your
Zend Framework project application directory.

Make sure the include folder is in your Zend_Loader
include path or move the Scaffolding.php so that it
is placed in your library include path.

Define each Controller that should be a Scaffolding Interface
as:

class SomeController extends WW_Controller_Scaffolding {
    public function init() {
        $this->setScaffolding(new ZendDbTableModel(), $options);
    }
}

Where $options is an array or Zend_Config object with any of the following keys:

  'allow_edit_primary_key' True/false - Whether the form allows you to set the
                          Primary Key fields or not

 'field_names' an Array of the Database Tables field names mapped to Label Names

 'hide_list_fields' Array of database table field names that should not be displayed in the list overview.

 'checkbox' an Array of Database Table field names that should be represented
            as Checkbox. Useful for TINYINT(1) fields that represent boolean decisions.

 'view_folder' Sometimes you want to use different views for scaffolding in one project. Use
               this variable and copy the scaffolding folder for each component you want to
               change the view basics for.

Todos & Problems:

• Many To Many Relationships are not implemented yet (Using MultiSelec).
• Compound Keys are probably not working correctly
• Relationships on non-primary key fields probably don't work as expected
• Relationships with lots of data are not scaled down for easy administration.

Please report any bugs and feature requests or recommendations to kontakt at beberlei dot de.