User Form Handling in Freemedia Tool

Very first thing in the  Freemedia process is user filling the form in order to create a ticket(making a request). This form should handle correctly , otherwise whole process will become a mess. That because if user enter invalid details, then volunteers will not be able to fulfill the requests. So form handling mechanism should have;

• Proper validation for each field.
• Preventing duplicates.
• User friendly.  

For achieve these things first we need to have a proper database structure.So following  illustrate the ER diagram. 

After the database design I created models for each entity in cakePHP. For that I use CLI tool provided in cakePHP. It makes life easy :) . By just typing "cake bake model" we can create a new model. CLI tool suggest appropriate models from the database. So that we can select what we want. Then tool suggest what are the things that can included in a model.Such as validations,associations(linking models) and etc.

Then I created controller for handle model data. Up to now controller has add() function which insert user data into the database.


Then we need a view to view the user form.

In next form, there is a field for select country. In order to add country list I used formHelp in view.So I created file in view/Helper and use it in the controller(new helper function name should be added to $helper array). ex- if file is LangHelper.php  in controller $helpers = array('Html', 'Form','Lang', 'Session')  should be added.
Here is the code for helper I added to create country drop down list

Then in view file which controller has added the helper can use helper we can create country list like this
             $this->lang->countrySelect('Country');