in reply to (Ovid) Re(2): Automatic Generation of Form Handling Code
in thread Automatic Generation of Form Handling Code
Lately, most of the code I write for CGI's generally follows the same basic design pattern:
- Receive the values with CGI.pm.
- Validate and detaint the parameters with HTML::FormValidator.
- <shamless plug>Build a multi-dimensional hash with CGI::State</shameless plug>
- If there is an error, or missing field, use HTML::FillInForm and HTML::Template to re-fill in the form with the submitted data and print an error.
- Do some work, usually with DBI, etc
- Use HTML::Template to display a page to the user either prompting the user for more info, or display the results of the work.
(I hear that Apache::Pagekit encapsulates alot of this into a single framework, but I am not convinced that the platform is stable enough for my needs yet.)
The great thing about HTML::FormValidator is that you can set up "validation profiles". By this I mean you can built a set of rules for a newsletter subscription, or an order submission, for example. The design of the module allows it to share these pre-made profiles with many other scripts. Once you write a profile for what I call a "web object", you can reuse it over and over for the same type of data.
If your 40-odd scripts are asking for similar types of data, using this module might be a good way to factor out all the validation and detainting code.
Update: Sorry, I see that you have 40 elements per form, not scripts. Either way, this module *will* save you enough time, so you can concentrate on Quake more =)