NAME

HTML::FormHandler::Field::Repeatable - repeatable (array) field

VERSION

version 0.36002

SYNOPSIS

In a form, for an array of hashrefs, equivalent to a 'has_many' database relationship.

has_field 'addresses' => ( type => 'Repeatable' );
has_field 'addresses.address_id' => ( type => 'PrimaryKey' );
has_field 'addresses.street';
has_field 'addresses.city';
has_field 'addresses.state';

In a form, for an array of single fields (not directly equivalent to a database relationship) use the 'contains' pseudo field name:

has_field 'tags' => ( type => 'Repeatable' );
has_field 'tags.contains' => ( type => 'Text',
     apply => [ { check => ['perl', 'programming', 'linux', 'internet'],
                  message => 'Not a valid tag' } ]
);

or use 'contains' with single fields which are compound fields:

has_field 'addresses' => ( type => 'Repeatable' );
has_field 'addresses.contains' => ( type => '+MyAddress' );

If the MyAddress field contains fields 'address_id', 'street', 'city', and 'state', then this syntax is functionally equivalent to the first method where the fields are declared with dots ('addresses.city');

DESCRIPTION

This class represents an array. It can either be an array of hashrefs (compound fields) or an array of single fields.

The 'contains' keyword is used for elements that do not have names because they are not hash elements.

This field node will build arrays of fields from the the parameters or an initial object, or empty fields for an empty form.

The name of the element fields will be an array index, starting with 0. Therefore the first array element can be accessed with:

$form->field('tags')->field('0')
$form->field('addresses')->field('0)->field('city')

or using the shortcut form:

$form->field('tags.0')
$form->field('addresses.0.city')

The array of elements will be in $form->field('addresses')->fields. The subfields of the elements will be in a fields array in each element.

foreach my $element ( $form->field('addresses')->fields )
{
   foreach my $field ( $element->fields )
   {
      # do something
   }
}

Every field that has a 'fields' array will also have an 'error_fields' array containing references to the fields that contain errors.

Note that after updates to the database the fields will be reloaded. This means that the array indexes ( the '3' in $form->field('addresses.3') ) may not be the same if there have been changes since the fields were initially loaded.

ATTRIBUTES

index

This attribute contains the next index number available to create an additional array element.

num_when_empty

This attribute (default 1) indicates how many empty fields to present in an empty form which hasn't been filled from parameters or database rows.

num_extra

When the field results are built from an existing object (item or init_object) an additional number of repeatable elements will be created equal to this number. Default is 0.

add_extra

When a form is submitted and the field results are built from the input parameters, it's not clear when or if an additional repeatable element might be wanted. The method 'add_extra' will add an empty repeatable element.

$form->process( params => {....} );
$form->field('my_repeatable')->add_extra(1);

This might be useful if the form is being re-presented to the user.

AUTHOR

FormHandler Contributors - see HTML::FormHandler

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Gerda Shank.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.