While a form's usefulness primarily derives from the elements it contains, it can also contain other metadata, such as a name (often used as a unique ID in the HTML markup); the form action and method; the number of elements, groups, and sub forms it contains; and arbitrary metadata (usually used to set HTML attributes for the form tag itself).
You can set and retrieve a form's name using the name accessors:
<?php
// Set the name:
$form->setName('registration');
// Retrieve the name:
$name = $form->getName();
To set the action (url to which the form submits) and method (method
by which it should submit, e.g., 'POST' or 'GET'), use the action
and method accessors:
<?php
// Set the action and method:
$form->setAction('/user/login')
->setMethod('post');
You may also specify the form encoding type specifically using the
enctype accessors. Zend_Form defines two constants,
Zend_Form::ENCTYPE_URLENCODED and
Zend_Form::ENCTYPE_MULTIPART, corresponding to the
values 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' and
'multipart/form-data', respectively; however, you can set this to
any arbitrary encoding type.
<?php
// Set the action, method, and enctype:
$form->setAction('/user/login')
->setMethod('post')
->setEnctype(Zend_Form::ENCTYPE_MULTIPART);
Note
The method, action, and enctype are only used internally for rendering, and not for any sort of validation.
Zend_Form implements the Countable
interface, allowing you to pass it as an argument to count:
<?php
$numItems = count($form);
Setting arbitrary metadata is done through the attribs accessors.
Since overloading in Zend_Form is used to access
elements, display groups, and sub forms, this is the only method for
accessing metadata.
<?php
// Setting attributes:
$form->setAttrib('class', 'zend-form')
->addAttribs(array(
'id' => 'registration',
'onSubmit' => 'validate(this)',
));
// Retrieving attributes:
$class = $form->getAttrib('class');
$attribs = $form->getAttribs();
// Remove an attribute:
$form->removeAttrib('onSubmit');
// Clear all attributes:
$form->clearAttribs();