Form Generation Library

[eluser]Ttj9a[/eluser]
I have noticed that a couple of people have posted about (at least) checkbox fields not being correctly populated when validation has failed.

It seems like a probable source of the problem is the way the form_validation library 'set_value' function behaves. When the submitted data is an array (e.g. multiple checkboxes) then the 'set_value' function uses the 'array_shift' function on the posted data. (see code from Form_validation.php, lines 726-741)

Code:

function set_value($field = '', $default = '')
    {
...
        // If the data is an array output them one at a time.
        //     E.g: form_input('name[]', set_value('name[]');
        if (is_array($this->_field_data[$field]['postdata']))
        {
            return array_shift($this->_field_data[$field]['postdata']);
        }

        return $this->_field_data[$field]['postdata'];
    }

The result of this is that each time 'set_value' is executed, it returns *one* of the values submitted, and will not return this value again.
This is a problem, because the block of code:

Code:

case 'checkbox':
case 'radio':
$checked = set_value($name);
$this->$element->atts['checked'] = ($checked && in_array($this->$element->value, $checked)) ? TRUE : FALSE;
break;

executes once per checkbox in the list of checkboxes. The first time it runs, you get the first value from the submitted checkbox array (which may actually be the value associated with the second checkbox if the first wasn't checked). The second time it runs, you get the second value from the submitted checkbox array.

The long and the short of it is this: either set_value is not the right function to use, or it needs to be run multiple times, the returned data stored (e.g. in an array) and then the $checked status matched against the contents of the array.

I'll probably hack something up to do that, but it will probably not be pretty (nor in the theme of the library).

For reference: I'm using CodeIgniter 2.0.2 on Win64 platform (using wamp).