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Top Tip: XHTML with Zend Form Elements

When you render a Zend_Form, the elements will render to HTML compliance rather than XHTML compliance, even if you have < ?php echo $this->doctype('XHTML1_STRICT');?> at the top of your layout script. Practically, this means that all the input elements do not end in "/>".

To resolve this, you need to call the doctype() view helper prior to rendering your form.

Within my projects, I do this within a front controller plug-in called ViewSetup that looks a little like this:


class App_Controller_Plugin_ViewSetup extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract
{
    public function dispatchLoopStartup(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
    {
        // setup the layout
        Zend_Layout::startMvc(); 
        
        $viewRenderer = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('viewRenderer');
        $viewRenderer->init();
        
        $view = $viewRenderer->view;
        $view->doctype('XHTML1_TRANSITIONAL');

        $view->headMeta()->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Type', 'text/html;charset=utf-8');
    }
}

Obviously, this class lives in the file library/App/Controller/Plugin/ViewSetup.php.

As you can see, I also set up the meta tag for the content-type to UTF-8 ready for rendering later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 29th May 2008 at 08:32 and is filed under Zend Framework.

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