Cohesive Web

Most of us are familiar with calendars in web pages. Small calendar showing date and year are really good to see and useful too. While in case of forms we have seen calendars attached with date fields. In some of my earlier projects I have designed date fields using simple drop down menu containing the data, month and year menu. It’s good but not very user friendly as user need to select 3 menus to choose a certain date. I had to stick with that format as I mostly use PEAR HTML_QuickForm to design forms in the web pages. Among many reasons the most unavoidable one is that it automatically generates client side validation JavaScript code. With time I realized that I should find some options to integrate calendar object with the QuickForm.

After giving a thorough search I selected jscalendar to incorporate with my form elements. The reasons behind selecting jscalendar are:

• It has a nice interface and wide variety of themes.
• Multiple integration options along with selectable date format to put the date in the text field.
• Support for integrating the calendar object with HTML_QuickForm.

Prior to integrate the jscalendar I need to upgrade HTML_QuickFom version to 3.2.10 as I found some code added in this version to support jscalendar. I also need to upgrade my PEAR DB package to version 1.7.13 and DB_Table to version 1.5.5. In my projects most of the cases I generate forms using DB_Table instead of using QuickForm directly. This gives an extra benefit for data validation and storing them in database.

After the up-gradating the required pear packages I worked upon integrating the jscalendar code. After a spending a moderate amount of time I was able to work jscalender with the QuickForm. But unfortunately when I was trying generate forms using DB_Table jscalendar component was not working. I was getting javascript errors.
I was following the method described by Philippe Jausions of 11abacus in jscalendar.php file. It was working fine with the QuickForm. In that case I was using addElements function to add jscalendar with proper options using the $option array like this –

[code lang=”php-brief”]
$options = array(
‘baseURL’ => ‘../js/jscalendar/’,
‘styleCss’ => ‘calendar-win2k-1.css’,
‘language’ => ‘en’,
‘button’ => ”,
‘setup’ => array(
‘inputField’ => ‘datefield1’,
‘ifFormat’ => ‘%d.%m.%Y %H:%M’,
‘showsTime’ => true,
‘time24’ => true,
‘weekNumbers’ => false,
‘showOthers’ => true
),
);
$form->addElement(‘jscalendar’, ‘ datefield1’, ‘My Date’, $options);
[/code]

I used this same option array in the column definition for the same field, as DB_Table uses the column definition for the attributes of the form elements of the form. I written like

[code lang=”php-brief”]
‘datefield1’ => array(
‘type’ => ‘varchar’,
‘size’ => 20,
‘qf_type’ => ‘jscalendar’,
‘qf_label’=> ‘Date:‘,
‘require’ => false,
‘qf_attrs’ => array(‘class’=> ‘formfield’,’id’ => ‘datefield1’),
‘qf_opts’ => array(
‘baseURL’ => ‘../js/jscalendar/’,
‘styleCss’ => ‘calendar-win2k-1.css’,
‘language’ => ‘en’,
‘button’ => ”,
‘setup’ => array(
‘inputField’ => ‘listadata’,
‘ifFormat’ => ‘%d.%m.%Y %H:%M’,
‘showsTime’ => true,
‘time24’ => true,
‘weekNumbers’ => false,
‘showOthers’ => true
),
),
‘qf_client’=> true,
‘qf_rules’ => array(
‘required’ => ‘Date is required.’,
),
),
[/code]

It didn’t worked and also gave the javascript error as calendar.Setup – no such method found….
Now I started working on how to fix this problem. I started checking the all the codes thoroughly and found that using QuickForm from DB_Table setting all these options can’t be done. After spending some upon those codes I rewrite the column definition like this

[code lang=”php-brief”]
‘datefield1’ => array(
‘type’ => ‘varchar’,
‘size’ => 20,
‘qf_type’ => ‘jscalendar’,
‘qf_label’=> ‘Date:‘,
‘require’ => false,
‘qf_attrs’ => array(‘class’=> ‘formfield’,’id’ => ‘datefield1’),
‘qf_opts’ => array(
‘ifFormat’ => ‘%d.%m.%Y’,
‘showsTime’ => false,
‘time24’ => false,
‘weekNumbers’ => false,
‘showOthers’ => false,
‘button’ => ”,
),
‘qf_client’=> true,
‘qf_rules’ => array(
‘required’ => ‘Date is required.’,
),
),
[/code]

Also I declared the global path defining variable in the page where I was generating the form. I defined

[code lang=”php-brief”]
$GLOBALS[‘_HTML_QUICKFORM_JSCALENDAR_BASEPATH’] = “/js/jscalendar/”;
[/code]

Oh that time it worked. It showed the small calendar while the clicking the small button beside the text field for data. But I wasn’t still happy with it. What I found that the calendar was coming but it wasn’t using any style and dates are raveling upon a transparent layer, making it too ugly. I tried to define the style using style class/ stylesheet file name in different places as different parameter. But nothing worked. Now I had two options then

Define the stylesheet for the calendar within the head tags of the page containing the form, means hardcode the name of the stylesheet.
Change the coding to accommodate to options for setting the style class for the calendar.

Selecting the 1st option means loosing some dynamicity and selecting the 2nd option means I need to change or modify certain code in pear class package files. So it was difficult to select any option. I was investigating the benefits and the hitches which can come out as a result of using any one of those options. Also side by side I was looking for third other option which can be better then these two. I spent almost two days and came up with a decision of selecting the second option. I decided to add two lines of code in the QuicfForm.php file in the DB package as

[code lang=”php-brief”]
if(isset($col[‘qf_theme’])) {
$element->theme = $col[‘qf_theme’];
}
[/code]

Also I have added one more element in column definitions for the date field as

[code lang=”php-brief”]
‘datefield1’ => array(
…… …….
…… …….
‘qf_theme’ => ‘calendar-win2k-2’,
),
[/code]

Now my problem is solved and the jscalendar is working seamlessly with the QuickForm from the DB_Table package too.

My opinion is if you like to add the two lines of code in QuickForm.php file you can add it but you need to remember it at the time when you upgrade the pear package. Also you need to check if it works properly or not. The other way is to hardcode the stylesheet file within the head tag part of the page where you will go to generate the form. In this case you will surely loose some dynamicity but this is easier to work with. Choice is yours.

Currently I am working upon another important issue in php. I need some time to accomplish this job. I will discuss this issue too cause I find it very interesting. However if you find this above discussion useful then I might expect your comment here. Suggestion and queries are also welcome.