Hi, I wonder what others think of the best practice for the validation part:
a) Keep the validation rules in the form objects and let Zend_Form handle the validation part b) Keep the validation rules in the model object and let Zend_Db_Table handle the validation part by extending its insert() and update() methods c) Keep the validation rules in the row object and let Zend_Db_Table_Row handle the validation part by extending its _insert() and _update() methods The a) solution has the disadvantage of redundant validation rule definitions, e.g. think about a user table which has a user_name and only alphanumeric values and a length between 5 and 16 chars are allowed. You will have a form for registration, for updating, for login and for password recovery. All these forms expect the user_name as an input and in all these forms you will need to add your validation rules. If you want to change the maximum length to 64 chars you will need to amend the validation rules for all these forms. The big advantage of Zend_Form is the very nice integration of the validation part, though. If I use the b) solution with a new validate() method which is called by insert() and update() I will have another problem: for insertion or updating there might be other fields to be mandatory (e.g. password in registration is mandatory, while updating it is not). So I still will probably work with a validateInsert() and a validateUpdate() method, not to forget the validateLogin() and validatePasswordRecovery() methods. None of these solutions seem to be the perfect solution. Maybe to keep the validation on column level in Zend_Db_Table_Row and let Zend_Form just define the mandatory / not mandatory part would be the best solution? Any thoughts? Thanks and best regards, Ralf
