Begin by installing this package through Composer. Edit your project's composer.json
file to require laravelcollective/html
.
$ composer require laravelcollective/html
Looking to install this package in Lumen? First of all, making this package compatible with Lumen will require some core changes to Lumen, which we believe would dampen the effectiveness of having Lumen in the first place. Secondly, it is our belief that if you need this package in your application, then you should be using Laravel anyway.
Since this package internally uses strict comparisons (===
instead of ==
) be careful when passing numeric values into your forms.
Values in HTML are submitted as strings and Laravel old values stored in flash session are strings.
In this example, this package will correctly insert selected
HTML attribute into the radio input - because the passed value '1'
strictly equals to the old submitted value in the session '1'
:
echo Form::radio('category_id', '1'); // '1' === '1' - comparing passed value and old session value
However, in this example, the passed integer value 1
is not strictly equal to the old submitted string value '1'
in the session and the selected
HTML attribute will not be inserted:
echo Form::radio('category_id', 1); // 1 === '1' - comparing passed value and old session value
{!! Form::open(['url' => 'foo/bar']) !!}
//
{!! Form::close() !!}
By default, a POST
method will be assumed; however, you are free to specify another method:
echo Form::open(['url' => 'foo/bar', 'method' => 'put'])
Note: Since HTML forms only support
POST
andGET
,PUT
andDELETE
methods will be spoofed by automatically adding a_method
hidden field to your form.
You may also open forms that point to named routes or controller actions:
echo Form::open(['route' => 'route.name'])
echo Form::open(['action' => 'Controller@method'])
You may pass in route parameters as well:
echo Form::open(['route' => ['route.name', $user->id]])
echo Form::open(['action' => ['Controller@method', $user->id]])
If your form is going to accept file uploads, add a files
option to your array:
echo Form::open(['url' => 'foo/bar', 'files' => true])
Laravel provides an easy method of protecting your application from cross-site request forgeries. First, a random token is placed in your user's session. If you use the Form::open
method with POST
, PUT
or DELETE
the CSRF token will be added to your forms as a hidden field automatically. Alternatively, if you wish to generate the HTML for the hidden CSRF field, you may use the token
method:
echo Form::token();
Route::post('profile',
[
'before' => 'csrf',
function()
{
//
}
]
);
Often, you will want to populate a form based on the contents of a model. To do so, use the Form::model
method:
echo Form::model($user, ['route' => ['user.update', $user->id]])
Now, when you generate a form element, like a text input, the model's value matching the field's name will automatically be set as the field value. So, for example, for a text input named email
, the user model's email
attribute would be set as the value. However, there's more! If there is an item in the Session flash data matching the input name, that will take precedence over the model's value. So, the priority looks like this:
This allows you to quickly build forms that not only bind to model values, but easily re-populate if there is a validation error on the server!
Note: When using
Form::model
, be sure to close your form withForm::close
!
Laravel's Eloquent Accessor allow you to manipulate a model attribute before returning it. This can be extremely useful for defining global date formats, for example. However, the date format used for display might not match the date format used for form elements. You can solve this by creating two separate accessors: a standard accessor, and/or a form accessor.
To define a form accessor, create a formFooAttribute
method on your model where Foo
is the "camel" cased name of the column you wish to access. In this example, we'll define an accessor for the date_of_birth
attribute. The accessor will automatically be called by the HTML Form Builder when attempting to pre-fill a form field when Form::model()
is used.
You must include the FormAccessible trait in your model definition for this to work.
<?php
namespace App;
use Carbon\Carbon;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Collective\Html\Eloquent\FormAccessible;
class User extends Model
{
use FormAccessible;
/**
* Get the user's first name.
*
* @param string $value
* @return string
*/
public function getDateOfBirthAttribute($value)
{
return Carbon::parse($value)->format('m/d/Y');
}
/**
* Get the user's first name for forms.
*
* @param string $value
* @return string
*/
public function formDateOfBirthAttribute($value)
{
return Carbon::parse($value)->format('Y-m-d');
}
}
echo Form::label('email', 'E-Mail Address');
echo Form::label('email', 'E-Mail Address', ['class' => 'awesome']);
Note: After creating a label, any form element you create with a name matching the label name will automatically receive an ID matching the label name as well.
echo Form::text('username');
echo Form::text('email', '[email protected]');
Note: The hidden and textarea methods have the same signature as the text method.
echo Form::password('password', ['class' => 'awesome']);
echo Form::email($name, $value = null, $attributes = []);
echo Form::file($name, $attributes = []);
echo Form::checkbox('name', 'value');
echo Form::radio('name', 'value');
echo Form::checkbox('name', 'value', true);
echo Form::radio('name', 'value', true);
echo Form::number('name', 'value');
echo Form::date('name', \Carbon\Carbon::now());
echo Form::file('image');
Note: The form must have been opened with the
files
option set totrue
.
echo Form::select('size', ['L' => 'Large', 'S' => 'Small']);
echo Form::select('size', ['L' => 'Large', 'S' => 'Small'], 'S');
This will create an <option>
element with no value as the very first option of your drop-down.
echo Form::select('size', ['L' => 'Large', 'S' => 'Small'], null, ['placeholder' => 'Pick a size...']);
echo Form::select('animal',[
'Cats' => ['leopard' => 'Leopard'],
'Dogs' => ['spaniel' => 'Spaniel'],
]);
echo Form::selectRange('number', 10, 20);
echo Form::selectMonth('month');
echo Form::submit('Click Me!');
Note: Need to create a button element? Try the button method. It has the same signature as submit.
It's easy to define your own custom Form class helpers called "macros". Here's how it works. First, simply register the macro with a given name and a Closure:
Form::macro('myField', function()
{
return '<input type="awesome">';
});
Now you can call your macro using its name:
echo Form::myField();
Custom Components are similar to Custom Macros, however instead of using a closure to generate the resulting HTML, Components utilize Laravel Blade Templates. Components can be incredibly useful for developers who use Twitter Bootstrap, or any other front-end framework, which requires additional markup to properly render forms.
Let's build a Form Component for a simple Bootstrap text input. You might consider registering your Components inside a Service Provider's boot
method.
Form::component('bsText', 'components.form.text', ['name', 'value', 'attributes']);
Notice how we reference a view path of components.form.text
. Also, the array we provided is a sort of method signature for your Component. This defines the names of the variables that will be passed to your view. Your view might look something like this:
// resources/views/components/form/text.blade.php
<div class="form-group">
{{ Form::label($name, null, ['class' => 'control-label']) }}
{{ Form::text($name, $value, array_merge(['class' => 'form-control'], $attributes)) }}
</div>
Custom Components can also be created on the
Html
facade in the same fashion as on theForm
facade.
When defining your Custom Component's method signature, you can provide default values simply by giving your array items values, like so:
Form::component('bsText', 'components.form.text', ['name', 'value' => null, 'attributes' => []]);
Using our example from above (specifically, the one with default values provided), you can call your Custom Component like so:
{{ Form::bsText('first_name') }}
This would result in something like the following HTML output:
<div class="form-group">
<label for="first_name">First Name</label>
<input type="text" name="first_name" value="" class="form-control">
</div>
Generate a HTML link to the given URL.
echo link_to('foo/bar', $title = null, $attributes = [], $secure = null);
Generate a HTML link to the given asset.
echo link_to_asset('foo/bar.zip', $title = null, $attributes = [], $secure = null);
Generate a HTML link to the given named route.
echo link_to_route('route.name', $title = null, $parameters = [], $attributes = []);
Generate a HTML link to the given controller action.
echo link_to_action('HomeController@getIndex', $title = null, $parameters = [], $attributes = []);