CRUD Generator

Elefant provides a simple CRUD generator as a command line tool to help developers save time by avoiding repetitive boilerplate code.

To create a new Elefant app with auto-generated CRUD handlers, run the following command from the root of the site:

./elefant crud-app contact id name email phone added

This will generate the following:

A new app structure under apps/contacts
A new Contacts entry under Elefant's Tools menu
A sample table schema for each database type with the specified fields (id, name, email, phone, added) under apps/contacts/conf/install_*.sql
A new model class contactsContact used to access the database table
Working add, edit, and delete handlers with version history support
Default form validations under apps/contacts/forms

How to customize

Starting with the example command above, the following steps will help you customize a new CRUD app.

1. Edit the schema

Edit the appropriate table schema file under apps/contacts/conf, changing fields to different types, etc. For example, you may want to change added to be a datetime field.

When you're ready, import the table schema via the following command:

./elefant import-db apps/contacts/conf/install_sqlite.sql

Note: Be sure to specify the correct schema file for your database.

2. Edit the forms

Next, edit the form validation rules and add ones specific to your fields. These are found under apps/contacts/forms. By default, all fields are marked as required.

In our case, we can add email = 1 to the [email] section, so that email addresses are validated correctly.

You should also edit the add.html and edit.html view templates under apps/contacts/views and adjust the validation notices, and change any input types (by default they're all single-line text inputs).

In the above example, we'll want to remove the added field from the views altogether, and also make two changes to the handlers:

Edit apps/contacts/handlers/add.php and change this line:

'added' => $_POST['added']

To this:

'added' => gmdate ('Y-m-d H:i:s')

Edit apps/contacts/handlers/edit.php and remove the following line:

$contact->added = $_POST['added'];

This will ensure the current date/time is set when a new contact is added, and the edit form will not affect this value on subsequent edits.

3. Customize the admin view

Edit the file apps/contacts/views/admin.html and customize the columns that are displayed. For example, let's add the added field to the list of fields shown, and make the email field a mailto: link:

{! admin/util/dates !}

<p><a href=""/contacts/add"">{""Add Contact""}</a></p>

<p>
<table width=""100%"">
    <tr>
        <th width=""21%"">{"" Name ""}</th>
        <th width=""21%"">{"" Email ""}</th>
        <th width=""21%"">{"" Phone ""}</th>
        <th width=""21%"">{"" Added ""}</th>
        <th width=""16%"">&nbsp;</th>
    </tr>
{% foreach items %}
    <tr>
        <td>{{ loop_value->name }}</td>
        <td><a href=""mailto:{{ loop_value->email }}"">{{ loop_value->email }}</a></td>
        <td>{{ loop_value->phone }}</td>
        <td>{{ loop_value->added|I18n::date_time }}</td>
        <td>
            <a  href=""/contacts/edit?id={{ loop_value->id }}"">{""Edit""}</a> |
            <a  href=""/contacts/delete?id={{ loop_value->id }}""
                onclick=""return confirm ('{""Are you sure you want to delete this contact?""}')"">{""Delete""}</a>
        </td>
    </tr>
{% end %}
</table>
</p>

{! navigation/pager?style=text&url=[url]&total=[total]&count=[count]&limit=[limit] !}

What we've changed here are the following:

Added the {! admin/util/dates !} line to include the localized date support.
Added the added field to the table headers and adjusted the header widths.
Made each email field a mailto: link.
Added the added field to the loop, filtering it with I18n::date_time to format it and localize it to the current user's timezone.

4. Next steps

From here, you can edit your apps/contacts/handlers/index.php handler to provide a public-facing component to your app, or use the contactsContact model to integrate your contacts into other areas of your web application.

As you can see, Elefant's CRUD generation capabilities are a simple but powerful time saver for developers of all skill levels.

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This documentation was generated by the Elefant Documentation Project. We're always open to new contributions *wink* *wink*

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