PHP PFBC Select value to be different than Shown (PHP form Build Class)

Question 1

So i found the problem:

Somwhere along the way while PFBC creates the Select element, it uses the third parameter (in my example, $area or $ppl) to generate an internal property called options, probably to cover itself against single arrays of the type ["name", "name2", "name3"], inside OptionElement.php the following code is causing problems.

public function __construct($label, $name, array $options, array $properties = null) {
    $this->options = $options;
    if(!empty($this->options) && array_values($this->options) === $this->options)
        $this->options = array_combine($this->options, $this->options);
        parent::__construct($label, $name, $properties);
}

The error is here: array_values($this->options) === $this->options in my second array, $ppl, i have a perfectly indexed table starting from zero

$ppl = [
    0 => "name",
    1 => "name2",
    2 => "name3"
]

this triggers the control to think i have a simple array instead of custom keys, as: $array_values($ppl) === $ppl returns boolean(true)

The second array, $area is different, since it has missing keys:

$area = [
    0 => "name",
    10=> "name2",
    11=> "name3"
]

So $array_values($area) === $area returns boolean(false)

My solution, before touching PFBC (might be a bug, there has to be a better way to detect this case):

Change the database so $ppl starts from 1 instead of 0

$ppl = [
    1 => "name",
    2 => "name2",
    3 => "name3"
]

Incidentally then $array_values($ppl) === $ppl returns boolean(false)

And now my Select works as i expected:

<select id="person" required="" name="person">
    <option value="1">
       name
    </option>
    <option value="2">
        name2
    </option>
    <option value="3">
        name3
    </option>
</select>

Hope this helps!

Question 2

PFBC does have something to handle this - if you change the array key from 0 to "0:pfbc" the PFBC\OptionElement::getOptionValue() recognises it as an associative array.

I wrote a function to convert the array to a PFBC suitable array:

function getPfbcSafeArray(array $array){

    // This looks overcomplicated but we want to ensure we don't accidently re-order this array
    // Doing 
    //      $array['0:pfbc'] = $array[0];
    //      unset($array[0]); 
    // would put 0 at end


    $keys = array_keys($array);
    $index = array_search(0, $keys);

    if ($index !== false) {
        $keys[$index] = "0:pfbc";
        $array = array_combine($keys, $array);
    }
    return $array;
}

//An array that has first item as 0
$area = [0=>"name", 10=>"name2", 11=>"name3"];

//pass $area through getPfbcSafeArray() as we pass it to $form->addElement()
$form->addElement(new Element\Select(htmlentities("Area type:"), 
    "area", getPfbcSafeArray($area), array("required" => 1)
));

Would generate

<select id="area" required="" name="area">
    <option value="0">
       name
    </option>
    <option value="10">
        name2
    </option>
    <option value="11">
        name3
    </option>
</select>

Technically this is overkill - PFBC only does it wrong (in my opinion) if the first item in the array is 0 index. If the array has a 0 index in it after the start then the select box elements would render as expected. The function above is 'correcting' any occurrence of 0 index.

Question 3

Thank you so much for the answer. Was having the same problem. It seems I got it working by simply changing the index of the array to start from 1 instead of 0.

My case:

$ppl = array("1" =>"Bring Client Through Questionnaire","0" =>"Send Questionnaire to Client");

Question 4

Solution: For a select on a pull down list add blank value at the start of the list.

Just ran into that same issue. All the values in my database always start with 1 or greater as 0 is equivalent to not found for objects. I don't allow 0 as a valid objectID.

I was adding the line "-----Select on of the values-----" as an entry and had it as [0] which then gave me the 0,1,2... issue. Change the [0] to [''] blank and the PFBC code will work correctly. Agree another option is to modify the PFBC code but this is a work around solution.

Now both of these will work:

$ppl = [
    '' => "-----Select on of the values-----",
    0 => "name",
    1 => "name2",
    2 => "name3"
]

and

$ppl = [
    '' => "-----Select on of the values-----",
    1 => "name",
    2 => "name2",
    3 => "name3"
]

As mentioned, the issue is in class:

\PFBC\OptionElement

this class is extended by the following classes

Checkbox
Radio
Select
Sort
UnorderedList

This solution is probably not useful for classes like Radio or Checkbox where one would be less likely to want a menu option in the list.