Processors and Formatters #

Every value PhreeForm prints can pass through two transformation passes before
it lands on the page:

1. Processing (viewProcess) — first. Turns a raw value into a more useful
   one: look up a related record, compute a balance, extract a piece, convert a
   number to words.
2. Formatting (viewFormat) — second. Presents the value: as currency, a
   date, a percentage, upper/lower case.

Order matters: process, then format. A contact ID might be processed into the
contact’s name, then a number might be processed into a balance and then
formatted as currency. This is the seam where you customize output without
writing SQL gymnastics — and without forking Bizuno.

Where they’re applied #

At render time, for each field, the engine runs viewProcess(value, field.processing) and then viewFormat(result, field.formatting). You choose the
processor and formatter per field in the designer from
dropdowns; they’re stored as settings.processing and settings.formatting on the
field.

Either pass is optional — leave them blank and the raw value prints as-is.

Formatters (the presentation pass) #

Common built-in formatters:

(There are more — the designer dropdown lists every formatter registered on your
install.)

Processors (the transformation pass) #

Processors are richer and module-specific — each module contributes the ones
relevant to its data. A sampling:

The exact set depends on which modules are installed.

How the registry works #

Processors and formatters aren’t hard-coded into PhreeForm — each module declares
its own and PhreeForm assembles them:

• A module’s admin.php exposes $phreeformProcessing and $phreeformFormatting
  arrays. Each entry names the processor/formatter, a display label, a group, the
  owning module, and the handler function to call.
• At startup, the registry (initPhreeForm()) merges every module’s arrays into the
  PhreeForm module cache.
• viewProcess() / viewFormat() look a name up in that cache (formatters also have
  a core hard-coded set) and dispatch to its handler.

This is why installing a module can add new processors to the dropdown, and why
your own module can too.

Adding your own. A custom processor or formatter is just another entry in a
module’s $phreeformProcessing / $phreeformFormatting array pointing at a
function you write — no core changes. See
Custom PhreeForm processor
for the worked example.

Related #

• Data binding and fields — where processing/formatting attach
• Custom PhreeForm processor — write your own
• Form designer