Form Validation and Entity are not playing well together

[scrnjakovic]

If you pass both data and entity parameters to $form->isValid(), even though you expect $validation->getValue($field) to fallback to data if entity does not have that value (like From does), it doesn't happen. Validation will not try to read value from any other data source if entity is present.

For an example if you implemented CSRF check through validation, that wont work. That is, unless you have some sick, twisted desire to have a CSRF getter in your entities.

If you split dateOfBirth into three fields, glue them back and set to entity after validation, and you attach i.e. presence validators to those fields, the form will still fail validation if you didn't implement getters for those three fields in your entity. That's shame because it forces you to polute the entity with getters you don't need as we can utilize form's getters for displaying calculated values i.e. $form->getMonth().

cphalcon/phalcon/validation.zep

Lines 463 to 524 in 6518334

	/**
	* Gets the a value to validate in the array/object data source
	*
	* @param string field
	* @return mixed
	*/
	public function getValue(string field)
	{
	var entity, method, value, data, values,
	filters, fieldFilters, dependencyInjector,
	filterService, camelizedField;
	let entity = this->_entity;
	// If the entity is an object use it to retrieve the values
	if typeof entity == "object" {
	let camelizedField = camelize(field);
	let method = "get" . camelizedField;
	if method_exists(entity, method) {
	let value = entity->{method}();
	} else {
	if method_exists(entity, "readAttribute") {
	let value = entity->readAttribute(field);
	} else {
	if isset entity->{field} {
	let value = entity->{field};
	} else {
	let value = null;
	}
	}
	}
	}
	else {
	let data = this->_data;
	if typeof data != "array" && typeof data != "object" {
	throw new Exception("There is no data to validate");
	}
	// Check if there is a calculated value
	let values = this->_values;
	if fetch value, values[field] {
	return value;
	}
	let value = null;
	if typeof data == "array" {
	if isset data[field] {
	let value = data[field];
	}
	} else {
	if typeof data == "object" {
	if isset data->{field} {
	let value = data->{field};
	}
	}
	}
	}
	if typeof value == "null" {
	return null;
	}

Another thing that is giving me troubles is the fact that $form->isValid($data, $entity) automatically calls $this->bind($data, $entity) but doesn't accept whitelist parameter, forcing you to call $form->isValid($data) and then $form->bind($data, $entity), which in turn makes the entity unavailable to validators because $form->isValid() passes entity to validation class only if it was provided to the function directly, it does not pass entity from $this->_entity as a fallback.

So my proposal is following:

1. Rewrite Phalcon\Validation::getValue() method so that it tries to retrieve value from the array as well, before it gives up when it can't find one in the entity. But it should not write back filtered values if they came from an array while entity is present, as validation is unaware of whitelisting.

2. Rewrite Phalcon\Forms\Form::isValid() to accept whitelist as a third parameter which will be passed onto Phalcon\Forms\Form::bind()