Symfony ajax field validation

I was searching for a method to validate my form fields in symfony via jquery and ajax. I saw ppl suggesting to use jquery validation and other external libraries but I just figured out that there is a quicker way.

You could for example set up an event listener on your every field with the .each() jquery function and send an ajax request to symfony with a json object containing the field in question and the value the user provided.

On the symfony side there could be this:

$jsonValues = $request->getParameter('json_values');
$field = array_keys($jsonValues);
$field = 开发者_运维百科$field[0];
$this->form = new $this->formName();
$vs = $this->form->getValidatorSchema();
try {
  $toValidate = $vs[$field]->clean($jsonValues[$field]);
} catch (sfValidatorError $e) {
  return $this->renderText($e->getMessage());
}
return $this->renderText('ok');

What do you think about this idea? Is there a better one?

Okay this method works, but every time you send in a request symfony builds up the whole form, so I created an abstract class between the form class and the Base Form class:

    abstract class wsExtensionForm extends BaseForm {

  protected $widgetClass = 'input-widget';

  public function configure() {
    $user = sfContext::getInstance()->getUser();
    $ftw = $user->hasAttribute('fieldToValidate') ? $user->getAttribute('fieldToValidate') : false;

    if ($ftw) {
      $this->generateValidator($ftw, $this->validatorsConfig[$ftw]);
      $user->getAttributeHolder()->remove('fieldToValidate');
    } else {
      $this->generateWidgets($this->widgetsConfig, $this->widgetClass);
      $this->generateValidators($this->validatorsConfig);
      $this->generateLabels($this->labelsConfig);
    }
  }

  protected function generateWidget($wConfig) {

  }

  protected function generateValidator($id, $vConfig) {
    if (!is_array($vConfig)){
      if ($vConfig == 'sfValidatorChoice') {
        $methodName = 'get'.ucfirst($id).'Choices';
        $this->validatorSchema[$id] = new $vConfig(array('choices' => array_keys($this->$methodName()), 'multiple' => false), array());
      } else {
        $this->validatorSchema[$id] = new $vConfig();
      }
    }
  }

  protected function generateHelp($hConfig) {

  }

  protected function generateWidgets($wsConfig, $class) {
    foreach($wsConfig as $id => $widget) {
      if (!is_array($widget)) {
        if ($widget == 'sfWidgetFormInputText') {
          $this->widgetSchema[$id] = new $widget(array(), array('class' => $class));
        } elseif($widget == 'sfWidgetFormChoice') {
          $methodName = 'get'.ucfirst($id).'Choices';
          $this->widgetSchema[$id] = new $widget(array('choices' => $this->$methodName(), 'multiple' => false, 'expanded' => false), array('class' => $class));
        }
      }
    }
  }

  protected function generateValidators($vsConfig) {
    foreach ($vsConfig as $id => $validator) {
      if (!is_array($validator)){
        if ($validator == 'sfValidatorChoice') {
          $methodName = 'get'.ucfirst($id).'Choices';
          $this->validatorSchema[$id] = new $validator(array('choices' => array_keys($this->$methodName()), 'multiple' => false), array());
        } else {
          $this->validatorSchema[$id] = new $validator();
        }
      }
    }
  }

  protected function generateLabels($lsConfig) {
    $this->widgetSchema->setLabels($lsConfig);
  }

  protected function generateHelps($hsConfig) {

  }
}

After this you can do this in your controller:

public function executeProc(sfWebRequest $request) {
// checking if request parameters are OK
$this->initAction($request->getParameter('form_category'), $request->getParameter('form_id'));
if ($request->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
  $field = $request->getParameter('field');
  $field = explode('_', $field);
  $field = array_reverse($field);
  $field = $field[0];
  $fieldValue = $request->getParameter('fieldValue');
  $this->getUser()->setAttribute('fieldToValidate', $field);
  $this->form = new $this->formName();
  $vs = $this->form->getValidatorSchema();
  try {
    $toValidate = $vs[$field]->clean($fieldValue);
  } catch (sfValidatorError $e) {
    return $this->renderText($e->getMessage());
  }
  return $this->renderText('ok');
} else {
  $this->form = new $this->formName();
  if ($request->isMethod('post')) {
  $this->form->bind($request->getParameter($this->nameFormat));
  if ($this->form->isValid()) {
    exit('valid');
  }
  } else {
    $this->forward404();
  }
  $this->form->getWidgetSchema()->setNameFormat($this->nameFormat.'[%s]');
  $this->setTemplate('show');
}

}

and symfony doesn't generate the whole form so you can save some cpu cycles.