Plugin development: Forms

Question

I'm embarking on my first plugin build.

The docs are OK, but lacking in some areas or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place.

The settings page allows you to define any settings and when rending out the template view, pass through those settings. http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/plugins/plugin-settings

It makes sense that all of the settings are going to be form fields. Where's the documentation for form helpers?

Looking around at other plugins I can see an include to Craft's form templates.

{% import "_includes/forms" as forms %}

Where's the docs on how to use these form fields? Is this a Twig thing and I should be looking at those docs? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

There currently aren't any docs for _includes/forms... you'll need to backwards engineer it. You'll notice some common patterns as you dig in there, which gives great insight into the overall Craft structure.

That file (or batch of files) is one of the most commonly backwards engineered parts of the core code. You may be able to find other posts (on Stack Exchange or blog posts) which describe it in some detail, but you'll still want to investigate on your own.