Benefits

[JonoB]

What benefits will this lib have over FormGen Lib?

http://www.frankmichel.com/formgenlib/user_guide/index.html

[stickgrinder]

Actually I didn't know about FormGen. I googled a little bit and found nothing enticing me, so I managed to write my own class, after the work of David Morrow.

I'll take a look to FormGen and let you know if there are actual differences and where! Many thanks for this comment!

[stickgrinder]

From a VERY first glance I see following differences:

• FormGen seems to me more complete and full-featured. You see FB2 is still in pre-release state and a lot of features has to be created yet.
• From what I see FormGen allows you to build a single form and dump the resulting HTML into a string. Formbuilder2 allows you to instantiate as much forms as you like in different objects.
• FB2 has a simple but effective IoC capability that allows you to extend (or create from scratch) your renderer and validator so that you could get rid of CI's standard ones if you want. Still it's automagically integrated with CI classes/helpers by default, but FB2 seems more flexible on the developer side.
• FB2 requires PHP5, so FG has a +1 if you run on legacy systems.
• FB2 allows you to define buttons as you like. It still minds adding a submit if none is specified but there are no "reserved" fieldnames. +1 on designer side.
• FB2 has render_field, render_raw_field and render_group methods that allows you to "compose" a form in your view as you like; useful for special design needs. +2 on designer side.
• FB2 allows for fieldsets creation, so you could group fields together. It doesn't seems to me that FG can do the same but I could be wrong! :|
• FG has far better and more complete configuration file, full of wonderful options.
• FG manage more form element and additional HTML elements. FB2 delegates HTML to view layer, allowing you to access single fields or groups. Moreover, version 2.1 will have a template-based renderer so that you could specify HTML snippets in external files for each and every single fieldtype (on a config basis, with naming convention fallback and another deafult-behavior fallback based on CI native helpers). Since FB2 renderer is injectable (constructor AND method based injection) you could achieve the same with your own class/library now, with a bit of work.

I think I'll dive into FG to "steal" some ideas and features! :) Anycase I could bet FB2 is not as stable as FG! :)

I'll make you know if I discover some other difference. Thanks!