http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=610473

mattr has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks, I've got a Catalyst application that I started building at one time with HTML::Widget. However with a change in project author it is now deprecated with HTML::FormFu in the works as a replacement (in svn and described here, based in part on HTML::Widget and discussion going on in the H::W mailing list). (A Catalyst controller exists for it too). FormFu seems maybe alpha or beta quality (API changing) but bugs show up as they did with H::W.

When I tried to copy some code to make a new form using H::W the as_xml() function outputted all the form elements jammed into one line which is discouraging.. I think I had this problem once before too but even if I solve it, I remember H::W was not all that easy, it was tough to extend and there was this container kludge that didn't work for me. I backed off the mailing list about when radio button grouping was being discussed.

Now I have to build an admin interface with, and since I found H::W hard to use as well, I am looking once again at Catalyst::Controller::FormBuilder (based on CGI::FormBuilder). It has YAML-like syntax which FormFu also seems to be aiming towards.

If anybody has experience/recommendations they would be much appreciated. Constraint checking, validation and printing of errors are really icing on top, mainly it has to be quick and easy to make forms, repopulate the form, and if possible link to DBIx::Class in Catalyst to some extent. It seems H::W requires too much code (hence the YAML development I presume). How do you like FormBuilder, especially with Catalyst / DBIx::Class ? Anybody using FormFu and think it is best? Each form will be for a number of fields from a given class with some other elements possibly from other classes.