I recently went through this myself. I read a nice HTML::Widget example (Catalyst Tutorial) that I used to jump-start the project, but I found out HTML::Widget is no longer being developed. HTML::FormFu is the replacement that seems to be undergoing rapid development.

Since FormFu was so new I tried out CGI::Formbuilder with Catalyst. I had successfully used it before with CGI::App. It has YAML configuration, easy validation both server side and javascript.

I then found a nice article on FormFu in the advent Catalyst calendar, and decided to test it out since it seems to have a lot of momentum. My simple test worked well. One thing FormFu has going for it is the ability to work with database relationship when processing data. I don't have first hand experience with that aspect, but it looks promising to put together form components from multiple related tables.

My experience with Data::FormValidator has been good. A bit of a learning curve to assembling the profile, but powerful enough to handle arbitrary validations.

In summary, if I had to choose one I'd go w/ FormFu if I were more cutting edge and CGI::Formbuilder for the more conservative.