[pmwiki-users] ZAPForms: docs + future

Ben Stallings ben at interdependentweb.com
Sun Aug 12 12:26:28 CDT 2007


Knut Alboldt wrote, or schreib if you prefer:
> If ZAPForms are maintained, I think it's vital to change the recipe 
> according to changes in pmwiki regarding Form-Processing, i.e. if pmwiki 
> supports (new) form processing features in the future, the corresponding 
> ZAPForm-functions should be migrated accordingly using the new 
> pmwiki-features.

I agree, and Dan and I had talked about this some before he left the 
project.  The challenge as I see it is that ZAP forms can do more than 
one thing -- and each form can be uniquely defined within the wiki -- 
whereas PmForms are defined as a class outside the wiki (in PHP files) 
and do only one thing apiece.  Because of this difference, PmForms are 
much more secure, but less flexible.

The solution as I see it (at the risk of getting too technical for the 
pmwiki-users list) is to use the $EditFunctions array (or something 
similar) to cause multiple form processors to act on the same form 
submission, so that for instance, a single form could both send email 
and save variables to a page, or save variables to more than one page at 
once.  I haven't yet looked into doing this, and I won't have time to do 
so for a few months yet, but it's definitely on my list... along with 
the undelete recipe I was talking about in June...

What I am working on right now, which may be of interest to current and 
future ZAP users, is a CMS that uses a dozen or so ZAP "snippets" for 
all of its functions, and DataQuery for an optional database back-end. 
The working model is at http://territorytellers.org (but please don't 
join just so you can test it -- it is a production site), and as soon as 
I satisfy the client I'll generalize it and post it as a .zip file so 
that people can install a complete CMS, including all necessary recipes 
and the database backend, in a single download and with minimal 
configuration.

Thanks for your work on the ZAP documentation, Knut!  --Ben S.



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