Re: Preparing Zend_Validate_* for Export as JSON

FWIW, Bill just added the method getMessageVariables() to the validator base 
class. You can use this to get an array of most of the "config"-type member 
variable names. If you happened to need their current values, you grab those in 
a second step. However, to get write access to those, you have to do reflection 
(as you mentioned) and find all the setter methods.
Quote:
Bill Karwin wrote:
> But in the existing validator classes, these properties are protected
> and should be read-only.  That's the reason that __get() is provided to
> access them, and there's no __set().

BTW, I checked out that validator code you posted. It seems pretty darn useful 
to be able to call the validators you already have written in PHP from Javascript.
Regards,
Bryce Lohr


AHeimlich wrote:
> Having the config options available as public properties would help immensely
> (as long as it was consistent throughout all Zend_Validate_* classes). Then
> all I would have to do is have a wrapper class use get_object_vars() on an
> instance of the Zend validator it was managing. For classes like
> Zend_Validate_EmailAddress (which uses an instance of Zend_Validate_Hostname
> for host name validation) I could simply nest its configuration info inside
> of Zend_Validate_Email's (assuming, of course, that the instance of
> Zend_Validate_Hostname is available as a public property).
>
> The only stumbling block is that I was hoping for a solution that worked now
> as opposed to something that would be implemented in the future (would your
> idea even make it into 1.0RC3 or 1.0 Final?). I just had an idea about
> finding all of Zend_Validate_* instance's getter functions and calling them,
> but I can't use that consistently as some validators (namely
> Zend_Validate_EmailAddress and Zend_Validate_Hostname) don't have any getter
> functions (plus, a single call to get_object_vars() sounds much better that
> a call to get_class_methods() plus a call to every getter function). I would
> start using this, though, if your public properties idea goes through (it
> would be much easier to switch to it from my getter methods idea than from
> subclasses).
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> Aaron Heimlich
>
>
> Darby Felton wrote:
> > For the Zend_Filter_* and Zend_Validate_* classes, maybe it makes less
> > sense to have configuration variables protected than to publicize them.
> >
> > For example, I recently implemented an "allowWhiteSpace" option for the
> > Alnum and Alpha filter and validation classes as a public property. I do
> > not believe there is a hard and fast rule for whether such configuration
> > variables must be public or protected.
> >
> > I lean toward publicizing such variables where reasonably possible.
> > Would this help to solve your problem?
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Darby
> >
> > AHeimlich wrote:
> > > For my current project, I'm adapting a form-handling library that I've
> > > been
> > > working on[1] for use within the ZF and the project. The validation rules
> > > in
> > > this library are capable of preparing themselves for export as JSON by
> > > creating an associative array of config options they want exported. These
> > > and other things are then fed, as JSON, into a client-side validation
> > > processor (to see it all in action go to
> > > http://aheimlich.dreamhosters.com/HValidator/examples/javascript-integration/).
> > >
> > > As I was working on this, I noticed that there were a lot of validation
> > > routines that ZF has, that my library didn't and some that we share the
> > > ZF
> > > does differently (like how ZF's alphanumeric validators can handle UTF-8
> > > and
> > > mine can't) and I started wanting to take advantage of this. The problem
> > > I've been having is that I can't seem to figure out a good way to prepare
> > > the Zend_Validate_* classes for export as JSON (mainly because most of
> > > the
> > > config info I would want to export is located in protected properties).
> > > Is
> > > there a way to do this without subclassing the Zend_Validate_* classes?
> > >
> > > [1] http://aheimlich.dreamhosters.com/HValidator.zip