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 article was posted on 29 May 2008 in Zend Framework 1

9 thoughts on “Top Tip: XHTML with Zend Form Elements”

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 '

Hi Chad,

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

Regards,

Rob…

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

Christian,

You are right :) I've updated.

Regards,

Rob…

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

Regards,
Nour

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