Introduction - renderers

What are renderers?

Before release 3.0, form outputting logic was implemented as methods of HTML_QuickForm class. This led to two problems:

1. Bloat of the said class (80+ methods!)

2. Difficulties in adding new output logic (i.e. using template engines)

In release 3.0, new system was implemented. The form output logic is now contained in classes that extend HTML_QuickForm_Renderer, their behaviour is based on Visitor design pattern from the classic "Design Patterns" book. This gives the following advantages:

1. Code for some particular output method is loaded only when the method is used.

2. It is much easier to add new output method.

There are 8 renderers available since release 3.1.1, of which 2 are based on pre-3.0 code and 6 are new. The following template engines are directly suported: Smarty, HTML_Template_Sigma, HTML_Template_IT, HTML_Template_Flexy.

The main steps of using any available renderer are quite similar:

<?php // include the renderer class require_once 'HTML/QuickForm/Renderer/FooBar.php'; // instantiate the renderer $renderer =& new HTML_QuickForm_Renderer_FooBar($options); // do some customization $renderer->adjustSomething('element1', '...'); // ... $renderer->adjustSomething('elementN', '...'); // process the form $form->accept($renderer); // output the results $renderer->toFooBar(); ?>

Actual methods for customization and doing the output will of course depend on renderer type.