Well, I’ve finally got round to updating the JS Validation and PHP Validation scripts. This has been sitting on my desk for about 8 months, but I just couldn’t find the time. Many thanks to Mihai Ionescu and Nathan Howard for contributing their code. New functionality includes:

• is_alpha validation rule. This had been added to the Form Tools branch of the code several months ago, but never made it back to the root code.
• required validation rule now works with single checkbox.
• improved options for length rule: it now provides the options of checking that the number of characters entered into a field is >, >=, < and <=, in addition to the previous options of exactly a certain length or between a range (e.g. 1-3 characters).
• improved options for range rule: like the length rule above, it now checks the value of a number entered into a field is >, >=, < and <= a particular value - in addition to the previous options of being between a range of numbers (e.g. 1-100).

I will be updating the PHP Validation code to mimic the same functionality shortly. I will also update Form Tools to include this latest validation code. Even though it won’t be used in the Form Tools code anywhere, I know a number of people use it in their own forms.

The new code is backward compatible.

Changelog

1.0.3, Dec 23 – minor bugs fixes
1.0.2, Dec 13 – CSV download option added.
1.0.1, Dec 8 – minor bug fix
1.0.0, Dec 5 – initial release.

The following is a list of general structural goals for Form Tools 2.

• standardization of function return formats
• consistent use of $g_debug option
• rethink the purpose and usage of errors.php
• make client accounts optional. Should be a setting “has clients?” in Program Settings. If used, provides current options of creating/editing/assigning clients to forms. If not, it omits any client references in the UI. I think a lot of people use Form Tools solely as administrators. Having to create a separate “client” account for themselves is daft.
• “namespace” all SESSION usage (“$_SESSION['form_tools']” key?)
• “namespace” all globals (“$GLOBALS” hash?)
• improved security (…)
• better separation of CSS, PHP, HTML and JavaScript
• separate library.php into two parts, to simplify upgrading
• put all page open HTML and close HTML into templates
• [Language packs]
• phpDocumentor (?) – some way of better standardizing the function comments for use by developers / [API for developers]

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but over the last couple of months I’ve been working on a new project – some translation management software. Like the Data Generator, this is again derived from my Form Tools project. I wrote the Data Generator to generate sample data for Form Tools’ online demo; the translation management software will be used to manage translations (duh!) of the software, and keep track of versions, languages, translations and data export in Form Tools-friendly format. I’ll also be including XML, text, and excel export options so people can download the translations in a variety of formats.

It’s an interesting project. The goal is to provide a complete solution for managing all aspects of the translation process. Project leaders would log in, add the text to be translated in whatever categories/sections they see fit, specify which languages the content will be translated into, set the trust threshold (i.e. how many translators have to review the translation to mark the translation as “approved”), create translator accounts or indicate that anyone could login and provide translations. For open source projects like Form Tools, it’s free for anyone to login and translate – so I would set the trust threshold to be quite high (5, for example). For companies who’d be providing their own translators, it would be set to 1, since they would obviously trust their own employees.

Each project would have a dashboard screen showing percentage translated, percentage trusted, and provide a simple UI for letting translators view remaining text to translate, or viewing already translated text to provide their approval.

Unlike all my other projects, I think I may actually break away from my socialist tendencies and offer this as a paid service for corporations. Non profits, NGOs, open-source projects, humanitarian groups etc. will be able to use it at no charge. I’m not 100% about the details, but I’m going to sweet-talk a friend to manage this particular aspect of it…

Many thanks to Julius Davies who’s offered to host the site during development.

That pretty much sums it up! For a list of the new features, and instructions on how to request a copy, give this post a read on the Form Tools site. Enjoy!

I just updated the Data Generator to include csv (comma-separated value) support, in addition to XML, SQL, Excel and HTML. I included the option of being able to set your delimiter – and defaulted it to the pipe (|) character by default, since commas may appear in the generated data. I also fixed a small bug preventing the default dates being populated properly and added a new Date field example for MySQL datetime, as suggested by some bright soul.
I’ve fired off an email to Doc, who’s hosting the download file, so hopefully it will be available for download in the next 24 hours or so. Enjoy!