Rob Allen has a quick new post to his site sharing a simple way to add a filter to the Zend-InputFilter component when it's in use on your site.

Using Zend-InputFilter is remarkably easy to use. [...] How do you add your filter to it though?

He starts with an example of putting the component to use in requiring and filtering the value in "my_field" for the data provided. He then shows how to add his "simple filter that does absolutely nothing", the MyFilter, to the current set. He also shows the creation of a "filter factory" class that registers the custom filter into the chain with an alias of "MyFIlter". You can then use it just like you would any other filter and define it in your rules specification.

Matthew Weier O'Phinney is back on the Zend Framework blog today with a spotlight on another component of the Zend Framework. This time he features zend-inputfilter, a useful component for filtering the data coming into your application from your users.

In our previous two posts, we covered zend-filter and zend-validator. With these two components, you now have the tools necessary to ensure any given user input is valid, fulfilling the first half of the "filter input, escape output" mantra.

[...] To solve [the single shot validation] problem, Zend Framework provides zend-inputfilter. An input filter aggregates one or more inputs, any one of which may also be another input filter, allowing you to validate complex, multi-set, and nested set values.

As in the other tutorials in the series, Matthew walks you through the installation of the component via Composer and briefly describes how it operates. He then includes a code example of creating a new InputFilter instance, making inputs, attaching validators to them and then ensuring everything validates in the chain with an isValid call. He then covers input specifications - configurations based on array values - to define validators on the input elements. He ends the post looking at input filters, how to manage them and defining them by specification. He also mentions a few other pieces fo functionality the component includes but he didn't cover here.