Like many web developers I do forms all the time. I found myself doing the same all the time: placing input fields, assigning a name to each, ajax the form, then create the php which involves to assign a $php var to each $_REQUEST['var'], escape and validate data, build the html and emailing the results...
So I find that 70% of the work I repetitive but I just can't duplicate a page and change the fields. I end up wasting more time reformatting, deleting and adding different fields than creating from scratch.
I started planing to program a "list of IDs to html+php" converter in which I'd input all the IDs and this would output the basic html and php. Then I thought: there's got to be thousands of developers that go through this, I'd be reinventing the wheel. So this is my question, I'm trying to find that wheel that somebody must have invented already.
I found this: http://www.trirand.com/blog/jqform/ which does more or less what I'm looking for but it's an expensive solution and it has too much functionality for what I'd be using it.
Which tools do you use to optimize repetitive task about html and php?
Creating forms using plain HTML is cumbersome and time consuming. The task will be much simpler if you use an open source form library. I use Zend_Forms extensively. You could also look into the one provided by EZ Components
These form libraries allow you to specify various form elements, validators for each element and data filters (string tags, lowercasing etc...). Once you have specified these the library automatically handles the rendering of forms and further if there are errors it will renders the errors as well. Usually these libraries render the forms with certain predefined mark-up (HTML) but it's configurable as well.
If you start using one of these libraries you would save a lot of time while creating forms. In-fact I would suggest you to use a framework such as Zend or Symfony for your projects.
Related
I am a newbie in MTurk, and I am trying to create a very simple Categorization Project via their Requester UI (rather then the API).
Each batch I use has 10 items (question and possible answer). I have searched their documentation and forums with not help and so I have several questions:
When i use their Standard Categorization template, I have no option for modifying the HTML and layout (as shown for "Tagging of an image" project). the only formatting options are for the categories, instructions and includes/excludes. Is there a way to edit the HTML of the standard template they provide?
In the Standard Categorization template, while my input data file (csv file) contains 10 items, only 5 are shown (tried with 6, still only 5 are displayed in the preview). Is there a way to change this limitation?
When I try to use the "Create HITs Individually" (rather than the standard template, as explained above), I have the "Design Layout" options, but I cannot find a way to make the questions in the "form" required (which is possible via the API). Is there a way to achieve this?
If you stick to the standard project templates, you can't modify them. That's the reason to create HITs individually (through the RUI or via the API).
You'll have to show us your CSV file, because it's not really clear from your description what the issues could be.
Your third question is unclear, but basically for creating HITs individually, you simply do standard HTML markup and put in ${variablename} placeholders wherever you want one of your CSV upload variables to be placed.
If your project is at all large, I would definitely recommend going through the API. It's simply much more flexible than the RUI for creating any kind of customized design.
if I'm using rails 3 which uses asset pipeline to compile all
Javascripts, does that mean I can have only one Knockout view model for my entire application? If not, how do I specify which view model is binded with which view? In the tutorial code, it looks like 1 view model is bound per page, but that doesnt work in rails since all JS are loaded upon first page load.
No, you do not need to include all javascript on every page! This is a very bad idea.
There are many methods for limiting javascript to a single page, you should pick one:
Method 1
Method 2
Method 3
Please, please, please do not try to load all your javascript on every single page.
Update (after your comment below):
I think you are confusing a few different things here.
First, even if you compile all your javascript into a single gzipped/uglified file, that still doesn't force you to use one knockout viewmodel for your entire application. That file can contain multiple viewmodels. They don't even need to know about each other.
Second, the way the rails pipeline works is by concatenating related or dependant javascript files together. It does this to reduce the number of requests the browser has to make to get the javascript it needs for each page. It doesn't necessarily mean all your javascript becomes one file. Just that the javascript for each page become one file. For more information, check out the Rails Asset Pipeline Documenation, it has a great explanation of how it works and how to use it properly.
Third, neither of these things mean you need to write all your javascript as if it were one file. In fact, this is a bad idea. You should seperate your javascript into relevant files by functionality. This allows them to be reusable, as well as eases development work.
My app currently reads a script containing instructions on what the app should do next. Think of it this way ---> My app is like an orchestra, and when it is passed sheet music (the script), it knows what to do. The sheet defines what different parts of the orchestra do at different times.
Currently, writing the script by hand is tedious. I want to be able to define chunks, which I can drag and drop from my gui to the script. I was wondering if there already is tools which let you do something like this, or if I should write my own tool.
Basically, when I click on something in the gui, it should insert a template into my plist, which I can tweak.
EDIT: It looks like the ability to create "Property list Structure Definitions" is what I am after. I have tried searching the apple site, but I can't find any documentation.
Two things come to mind:
You don't mention what format the input is in, nor what you want the GUI tool to do beyond letting you "drag chunks". But if you can define your format into an XML schema, then you can use any number of XML authoring tools that customize their interface based on schema. Also gives you the ability to make it easy to let the UI enter parameters/customization, which your script language likely has. Final bonus: you might be able to convert script directly into a plist with a simple XSLT file.
Check out Briefs, which is a prototyping application for iOS apps that has a similar architecture.
I'm looking for a .Net component that will allow me to generate Word and/or PDF documents.
This must work on the server without MS Office installation. Preferably free. Also, it needs to be able to generate the documents based on an existing template of some sort i.e. I don't want to generate the whole document from scratch but allow a number of different templates that all have similar content that comes from elsewhere (e.g. database, XML files etc).
My initial investigations have turned up iTextSharp (but not sure if it can work from templates).
Any help that can expedite my investigation time will be much appreciated.
Thanks
I use ActivePDF at work with .NET - give it some HTML and it will output a pdf doc. However it isn't free - but we did look at a few other ways and this was 1
http://pdfcrowd.com/html-to-pdf-api/
It doesn't do word documents but converts html (your template) to pdf
Currently I'm trying JSF 2.0 and still learning the more advanced features.
JSF2 is comfortable when having to deal with pre-defined views (fixed component trees) whose widgets are completely known at compile time -- of course with the exception of repeating data list/table entries and light dynamic modification of forms via the DataTable "trick" (as I read here, especially under JSF2, can I add JSF components dynamically? and How to create dynamic JSF 1.2 form fields).
Now I'm wondering about the realization of completely dynamic JSF2 component trees, where a web user, for each given content type (e.g. 'Person', 'PersonList' but also 'PersonalManagementPanel'), can choose one from a list of content-type compatible widgets (=JSF custom components).
As result, this user will always see the "Personal Manager Page" rendered with his/her prefered "PersonalManagerPanel", which in turn also renders its nested components ('Person', 'PersonList') with the user's preferred variants.
Obviously, the goal is to get a selectively configurable/customizable JSF Page -- at runtime.
Is this scenario realizable in JSF2? -- How could this be done?
Are there more appropriate Java technologies for this requierement?
-- One possible alternative I'm thinking of is XML plus XSLT.
Thank you very much for your help and suggestions.
Best regards
Martin
You can use something like this:
<ui:include src="#{bean.template}" />
Or if you want more complicated components, you should take a look at the PreRenderViewEvent.
Note that there are issues with both solutions.
http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES_SPEC_PUBLIC-770
http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES-1708
http://java.net/jira/browse/JAVASERVERFACES-2041