On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:29:32 +0200 Ian Forbes  wrote:

> Hi All
>
> I am doing some work on a Quixote 2 application that we have running
> internally.
>
> I am writing some extra pages making use of the "Form" object. In terms
> of handling the data, errors, submissions etc this seems to work quite
> nicely but I don't like the look of pages I get when I use the
> "render()" method.

I've been using the following pattern for my forms:

def render[html](self, f)
    header()
    f._render_start()
    '''html for the form containing %(widget_name_title)s
    and %(widget_name)s''' % render_dict(f)
    f._render_finish()
    footer()

def render(w):
    if w:
        return w.render_content() + \
               htmltext('') % w.name + \
               (w.get_error() or '') + htmltext('')

def render_dict(form):
    d = {}
    for w in form.widgets:
        d[w.name+'_title'] = htmltext(w.title)
        d[w.name] = render(w)
    for w in form.submit_widgets:
        d[w.name+'_title'] = htmltext(w.title) or ''
        d[w.name] = render(w)
    return d

>
> So I have created a custom sub-class of Form and written my own methods
> for _render_widgets and _render_submit_widgets. So far so good.
>
> Next I have sub-classed the "add" method as it classifies a "reset"
> widget as a normal widget and not a "submit widget". Which means it gets
> put with the input fields at the top of the form and not with the
> buttons at the bottom. Perhaps this could be regarded as a bug.
>
> But now I don't like the way that "widget.render()" displays the
> buttons. So the next step is to subclass "ButtonWidget" and write my own
> customized version of "render()" for these widgets. SubmitWidget and
> ResetWidget are subclasses of ButtonWidget, so I have to write custom
> class definitions for those two using my custom ButtonWidget as their
> base class.
>
> But this is when things start to get ugly. The code in "form.py"
> contains direct imports for ResetWidget and SubmitWidget which picks up
> the original versions of these classes. So now it looks like I have to
> create my own customized copy of "form.py".
>

The direct imports are only instantiated in add_submit() and
add_reset(), so if you only use add() you can pass your own versions.

--
Patrik

> I am not too sure how far to go down this road. It maybe easier to
> create a local copy of the whole "quixote/form" subdirectory and
> customize it as required. This would break the whole concept of classes
> and sub-classes as if there is ever any change in the upstream code it
> will pass this application by.
>
>
> What is the most elegant "pythonic" way out of this dilemma?
>
> Is there any active development being done on Quixote which might result
> in future changes to the Form object?
>
> Has anybody used the "Form" object from quixote2 for anything except the
> basic pages, if so how did you go about it?
>
> What other techniques have readers used for generating pretty forms with
> lots of input fields?
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Ian
>
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