In a recent entry to his blog, Neil Garb shows his method for creating compound elements in a Zend_Form object in your Zend Framework website.

Zend_Form can save you a lot of time. It almost completely abstracts away the most boring and error-prone aspects of developing secure and standards-compliant HTML forms. But one thing it doesn't do out of the box is compound elements, such as three-field dates. In this post I'll show you the easiest way to do this ZF-style.

He goes through the creation of the sample controller, an example of a custom element (the multiple date drop-downs he mentioned) and how to handle the validation in a "Zend Framework way" via an isValid call.

On the PHP::Impact blog, there's a new post mentioning some of the problems that he (Federico) has run into when his Zend_Form forms got larger and larger - performance.

If you are using Zend_Form and your site increases in complexity and attracts more traffic, you are most likely to run into performance problems. Of course, bigger and more complex projects result in more load on your servers. [...] In this post I'll explain the problems I faced when using Zend_Form and how I managed to optimize it and improve the performance of my application.

He ran a few tests against his code and found out that one of the biggest causes of overhead was the many calls to other components in the framework to handle different parts of the output. His solution was to modify the Zend_Form_Elements component to check for dependencies before the form is executed. Pre-loading like this prevents the high-overhead (and repetitive) dynamic loading later on.

Rob Allen has posted a quick tip of how to use the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework to correctly render XHTML compliant output.

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.

He includes an example of the doctype call (on a view object) to tell the script to output in the "XHTML1_TRANSITIONAL" format.

Rob Allen has revisited a Zend_Form example he had created before, updating it with a fix for a common error people were seeing when the form tries to validate.

I've been thinking about the Simple Zend_Form File Upload Example that I discussed last month. To recap, if you haven't read the comments, if the form fails to validate for some reason then you get a nasty error.

He corrects the issue by creating an ArrayObject (thanks to the SPL) that can be used both as an array and can look like a string to htmlspecialchars and changing up the validation a little bit to work with the new object.

Padraic Brady has posted part eight of his series guiding you through his construction of Zend Framework-based blogging software:

In Part 8 of the ongoing saga describing how to build a real world blog application using the Zend Framework we finally reach the point at which we concentrate on blog entries. At the end of this Part, we will be able to create and edit entries in preparation for Part 9 when we will explore displaying them to the world!

In this part, he shows how to add in the Entry controller with an Add action inside (and what code goes in them). He makes a Zend_Form extended form and throws in some validation, a use of HTMLPurifier and the code to push these entries into your database.

Padraic Brady has continued his series about making a sample blogging application with the Zend Framework in a new blog post, part six - a focus on Zend_Form and Zend_Auth.

In the previous entry, we created a new Administration Module to hold blog management functionality, added a Module specific layout for it, and discussed the upcoming need to ensure this is only accessible by authorised Authors. In this entry I'll unravel some of Zend_Form's mysteries in adding a login form, before using Zend_Auth to implement authentication for authors.

He includes the code (controller and view) to add the login form as a part of the Author functionality and, using a few decorators to help him build the form how he likes it, extends the Zend_Form component to make his form with username, password and submit elements. He throws in some validation and a bit of error checking to finish it off.

On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new tutorial (by Matthew Weier O'Phinney) covering the use of decorators with the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework.

One point of flexibility [Zend_Form] offers has proved to be a pain point for many developers: decorators. This tutorial aims to shed some light on decorators, as well as provide strategies for creating your own decorators and combining them in creative ways to customize the output your forms generate.

Matthew starts with a little background behind the component to help you find your way around. Building on this, he shows how to use some standard output decorators and how to create decorators of your own. His example shows how to create a set of grouped checkboxes.

The IBM developerWorks website has a new article/tutorial posted today about the new features and functionality that's included with the latest release of the Zend Framework, version 1.5.

The popular open source Zend Framework just got some slick enhancements. Learn what's new in V1.5 and how upgrades, including Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, and Zend_View, enhanced support for GData Web services, and improved Ajax support can help PHP developers easily roll out cutting-edge Web applications.

They walk through each of the new components (or features in them) like Zend_Form and Zend_Layout/Zend_View with examples included. There's also mention of other miscellaneous updates like the addition of OpenID and InfoCard support, a LDAP authentication module and an interface with Google's GData service.

Matthew Weir O'Phinney has written up a post for his blog outlining some of the other cool little features that were included in the recent release of the Zend Framework, specifically with the Zend_Form component.

I've been working on for the past few weeks, and it's nearing release readiness. There are a number of features that Cal didn't cover in his DevZone coverage (in part because some of them weren't yet complete) that I'd like to showcase.

These additional features Matthew mentions are:

• Internationalization
• Element Grouping
• Array Support

Check out more of the great features of the component in the Zend Framework documentation.

Rob Allen has posted an example (a simple one to get you started) of creating a file upload form in the Zend Framework.

Zend Framework 1.5's Zend_Form component is missing support for the file input element as it is waiting on a file upload component to build upon. We're busy people, so we'll fake it...

His example gives a screenshot of the end result and includes all of the code needed to make it all work - the form, the custom file form element, a ValidFile validation class to ensure you're getting exactly what you want and the controller to define the form and execute it once the user submits.