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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.

9 Responses to “Top Tip: XHTML with Zend Form Elements”

  1. 1 Chad Kieffer
    May 29th, 2008 at 22:30 #

    Very helpful indeed! Thanks for sharing. By the way, it appears that you have a mismatched single quote type in appendName().

    I think this ′was meant to be this '

  2. 2 Rob...
    May 30th, 2008 at 06:25 #

    Hi Chad,

    That'll be WordPress trying to be helpful! It's correct when I edit the entry.

    Regards,

    Rob...

  3. 3 Christian
    June 1st, 2008 at 03:23 #

    Rob,
    I may be wrong(wouldn't be the first time) but for 'Content-Type' shouldn't you be using $view->appendHttpEquiv('Content-Type', 'text/html;charset=utf-8')?

    Christian

  4. 4 Rob...
    June 1st, 2008 at 08:26 #

    Christian,

    You are right :) I've updated.

    Regards,

    Rob...

  5. 5 Nour
    June 2nd, 2008 at 18:36 #

    Hallo Rob, I want to use fckeditor in mijn zf Wesite. Can you help me how i can do that.

    Regards,
    Nour

  6. 6 Gonzalo
    June 10th, 2008 at 23:15 #

    Hi Rob!, i think this is a real good wordk, but i don`t know hot to implement into my proyect, i have an modular estructure, something like this, 

    public/
library/
aplications/
      layouts/
      config/
      modules/
             contact/
                    controllers/                             
                             plugins/
                    views/
                    models/

    shout i call it
    Aplications_Modules_Contact_Controller_Plugin_ViewSetup

    and that's it? Regardss, Gonzalo

  7. 7 Rob...
    June 11th, 2008 at 05:01 #

    Gonzalo,

    I would create a directory under library/ called "App" and store things like this in there.

    Regards,

    Rob...

  8. 8 Jon
    June 11th, 2008 at 05:57 #

    The Zend docs say that XHTML11 is an option, but in fact it's not in the current 1.5.2 release.

    http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.view.helpers.html#zend.view.helpers.initial.doctype

    XHTML11 is an option in the trunk code, so it will probably make it into the next release.

  9. 9 Julian
    November 3rd, 2010 at 19:33 #

    Thanks for posting this. It helped solve my problem with special chars not displaying correctly.

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