What's a good practice to use forms in PHP? Can you use OOP PHP in a form?

Question

Hello people,

Right now i been creating a form for a comment section, a Login section, and sending email for a site i'm doing. The code I using was from a tutorial I learned and has too much HTML in it. It was the only way I knew how to create a form and valid the data. I wanted to ask if there was a better way to create forms and if there was a way to create a form in OOP PHP? I want learn to go beyond basic stuff to OOP.

Here's an example of the code I using for the moment:

<?php include 'includes/validation.php' ?>

<!-- START CONTENT -->
  <div id="mainContent">
  <div class="portContentTop"><img src="graphx/image.gif" alt="" border="0" /></div>
  <div class="portContent">
   <img src="graphx/image.gif" alt="Contact Me" border="0" /><h1 class="hidden">Contact</h1><br />
            If you wish to contact me, please fill out the form or send me an email at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>.
   <br />
             <? if( isset($_POST['send'])&& (!validateName($_POST['name']) || !validateEmail($_POST['email']) || !validateMessage($_POST['message']) ) ):?> 
            <div id="errorMessage">
             <ul>
                 <? if(!validateName($_POST['name'])):?>
                 <li>Your name must be 4 characters long.</li>
                    <? endif ?>
                    <? if(!validateEmail($_POST['email'])):?>
                    <li>Your email address has an error.</li>
     <? endif ?>
                    <? if(!validateMessage($_POST['message'])):?> 
                    <li>Your comment must be 10 characters long.</li>
                    <? endif ?>
             </ul>
            </div>
            <?php elseif(isset($_POST['send'])):?>
            <?php
    $name=strip_tags($_POST['name']);
    $email=strip_tags($_POST['email']);
    $message=strip_tags($_POST['message']);
    $subject= "A message from me was submitted by ".$name." ";
    $sentto= "[email protected]";

    $contents = "Name: ".$name. "\n".
       "Email: ".$email. "\n".
       "Message: ".$message. "\n";

    mail($sentto, $subject, $contents);

   ?>
            <div id="errorMessage">
                <ul class="errorValid">
                 <li>Your message has been sent.</li>
             </ul>
            </div>
            <? endif?>
   <form method="post" id="customForm" name="customForm" action="" >
             <table  border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="padding:0px; margin:0px;">
                  <tr valign="top">
                    <td align="center"><img src="graphx/h_name.gif" border="0" alt="Name:" /></td>
                    <td><input class="contactInput" id="name" name="name" type="text" size="30" /></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr valign="top">
                    <td align="center"><img src="graphx/h_email.gif" border="0" alt="Email:" /></td>
                    <td><input class="contactInput" id="email" name="email" type="text" size="30" /></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr valign="top">
                    <td align="center"><img src="graphx/h_comments.gif" border="0" alt="Comments:" /></td>
                    <td><textarea id="message" name="message" cols="30" rows="15" wrap="off"  class="contactInput2"></textarea></td>
                  </tr>
                  <tr valign="top">
                    <td></td>
                    <td align="left"><input id="send" name="send" type="submit" value="Submit" ></td>
                  </tr>
               </table>
          </form>
 </div>
<!-- END CONTENT -->

Answer 1

Yes, there are 'better' ways of creating forms. You might want to look at how popular frameworks do it.

Here's example from Zend Framework http://www.framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.form.quickstart.html

  $form = new Zend_Form();
  $form->setAction('/user/login')
       ->setMethod('post');

  // Create and configure username element:
  $username = $form->createElement('text', 'username');
  $username->addValidator('alnum')
           ->addValidator('regex', false, array('/^[a-z]+/'))
           ->addValidator('stringLength', false, array(6, 20))
           ->setRequired(true)
           ->addFilter('StringToLower');

  // Create and configure password element:
  $password = $form->createElement('password', 'password');
  $password->addValidator('StringLength', false, array(6))
           ->setRequired(true);

  // Add elements to form:
  $form->addElement($username)
       ->addElement($password)
       // use addElement() as a factory to create 'Login' button:
       ->addElement('submit', 'login', array('label' => 'Login'));