[Modus-devs] forms and objects

[Brad P. <br...@ro...>]

Hey All,

I am just getting the hang of how Modus works, so bear with my
ignorance. I have some thoughts/questions about forms and content
objects.

I set up the test application then created my own content object called
"event". The first thing I noticed was that I didn't really want to do
all the checking that is done when a content object is created. Granted,
some of this is due to having one page serve as a both "add" and "edit".
However, I would like to be able to do something like:

<cfscript>

event =
createObject("component","modustest.contentobjects.event").init();
	
if(isDefined("url.id")) {
	event.load(url.id);
}
	
if (event.hasErrors()) {
	// code to handle errors
}

</cfscript>

<cfoutput>	
	#event.renderBasicForm()#
</cfoutput>


I think the object should know if it has been POSTed and do the right
thing. Is it plausible to check for form.id (or form.fieldnames) in the
init function and take care of storing etc there?

Also, could the id be used to know if an object exists or not? I realize
that the init function is assigning the id. Could this be held off until
later? Perhaps it could be set to 0 or "" in init, then it being nonzero
would signify that it already existed.

I am guessing much of this has been considered but thought I would
through it out there anyway.

Brad