Retrieve rendered html for form fields in laminas inside of the Controller

Question

I've tried rendering form fields in laminas within the same form class and also controller. I can fetch them within the view, but i need this html in the server side to process and return the html via ajax.

i also search on set template for each field, but no good resource found.

Within the form, I did: use Laminas\View\Renderer\PhpRenderer;

then in the construct: $this->renderer = new PhpRenderer();

and tried to return html:

$form = new ManageInquiry(); // this is my form class
var_dump($this->renderer->render($form->get($fieldName)));
exit;

this gives A plugin by the name "render" was not found in the plugin manager Laminas\Mvc\Controller\PluginManager

same tried with formElement, formRow but still no success.

also in controller:

$html .= $this->formElement($sampleFormBluePrint->get($fieldName));
// here also same error as above was when within the form

Could someone help with this to get rendered html within controller or same form? Or even a partial template for each field and then render it within the controller and return to view via ajax?

Answer 1

I would suggest to cling to the MVC-concept and to not set view-logic within the controller. Also, view helpers like formElement, formRow only work in views and not in the controllers.

If you want to render a view, e.g. your form, without any layout around it, you could use the setTerminal-method:

use Laminas\Mvc\Controller\AbstractActionController;
use Laminas\View\Model\ViewModel;

class BazBatController extends AbstractActionController
{
    public function doSomethingCrazyAction()
    {
        $form = new ManageInquiry();
        $view = new ViewModel([
            'form' => $form,
        ]);

        // Disable layouts; `MvcEvent` will use this View Model instead
        $view->setTerminal(true); // <-- This does the trick!

        return $view;
    }
}

And now in your view you can design your form and use all available view helpers. And only your view-template will be rendered if you call the doSomethingCrazyAction() via an AJAX-request! The layout-file layout.phtml will be ignored

More can be found in the official docs: https://docs.laminas.dev/laminas-view/quick-start/#dealing-with-layouts