Zend subform view script render - html

Question

I would rather not deal with decorators as my form design is not exactly straight forward, but i would like to keep the functionality of validating the forms.
So i have it set up where sub forms are working correctly, but when i try to style it manually in my viewscript i get the name without the parent. I've seen other posts that are similar, but i haven't found a solution.
Example:
This is in my view script
<?php echo $this->form->username->renderViewHelper();?>
I then get
<input type="text" value="" id="username" name="username">
When rendered. It should be
<input type="text" value="" id="form1-username" name="form1[username]">
How do i get that form1 portion?
Thanks!
Edit
Ok, so i found one way.
By using belongTo, it works:
$form1->addElements(array(
new Zend_Form_Element_Text('username', array(
'belongsTo' => 'form1',
'required' => true,
'label' => 'Username:',
'filters' => array('StringTrim', 'StringToLower'),
'validators' => array(
'Alnum',
array('Regex',
false,
array('/^[a-z][a-z0-9]{2,}$/'))
)
))
));
Is there a better way to do this or is this the only way?
Edit2
public function prepareSubForm($spec){
if (is_string($spec)) {
$subForm = $this->{$spec};
} elseif ($spec instanceof Zend_Form_SubForm) {
$subForm = $spec;
} else {
throw new Exception('Invalid argument passed to ' .
__FUNCTION__ . '()');
}
$this->setSubFormDecorators($subForm)
->addSubmitButton($subForm)
->addSubFormActions($subForm);
return $subForm;
}
public function setSubFormDecorators(Zend_Form_SubForm $subForm){
$subForm->setDecorators(array(
'FormElements', \\<--- I tried to change this to PrepareElements before.
array('HtmlTag', array('tag' => 'dl',
'class' => 'zend_form')),
'Form',
));
return $this;
}

Answer 1

I believe you can get your desired output just by using:
<?php echo $this->form->username; ?>
I get the expected output when calling this without renderViewHelper. This is also without any special code for decorators or preparing sub forms. All I had to do was add belongsTo to the form element.
UPDATED:
If you set this to be your default decorator, you can eliminate the dd/dt tags from rendering, instead it will use a div. Then you may be closer to getting the custom output you want. You can change the tag in HtmlTag from div to whatever tag you would like to wrap your elements in. This is what I use mostly:
array(
'ViewHelper',
'Errors',
array('Description', array('tag' => 'p', 'class' => 'description')),
array('HtmlTag', array('tag' => 'div', 'class' => 'form-div')),
array('Label', array('class' => 'form-label', 'requiredSuffix' => '*'))
);
This is the default for Zend Framework:
array(
'ViewHelper',
'Errors',
array('Description', array('tag' => 'p', 'class' => 'description')),
array('HtmlTag', array('tag' => 'dd', 'id' => array('callback' => $getId)))
array('Label', array('tag' => 'dt'))
);
Note that file, and submit/button elements use different decorators.
Also see this answer