[Catalyst] Catalyst FormBuilder plugin on CPAN

Thu Aug 17 02:14:42 CEST 2006

All-

I just now uploaded Catalyst::Plugin::FormBuilder to CPAN, which adds 
support for FormBuilder in Catalyst. It's also available here:

http://www.formbuilder.org/download/Catalyst-Plugin-FormBuilder-1.02.tar.gz

Usage is similar to XMLRPC: for those controller methods that contain 
forms, simply associate a ":Form" attribute with them:

     package MyApp::Controller::Books;

     sub edit : Form {
         # this automatically loads root/forms/books/edit.fb
         # and creates a $c->form object for you
         $c->form->method('post');
         $c->form->messages('messages.fr');  # French errors
     }

The page rendering is handled for you by Catalyst using its Template 
Toolkit hooks. To get a standard form, just call form.render in your 
template:

     <!-- root/src/books/edit.tt -->
     [% form.render %]

Or, if you want finer control over the placement of your fields, you can 
directly render your form using FormBuilder methods:

     <head>[% form.jshead %]</head>
     [% form.start %]
       <table>
         [% FOREACH field IN form.fields %]
         <tr valign="top">
           <td>
             [% field.required
                  ? "<b>$field.label</b>" : field.label
             %]
           </td>
           <td>
             [% IF field.invalid %]
             Missing or invalid entry, please try again.
             [% END %]
           [% field.tag %]
          </td>
        </tr>
         [% END %]
         <tr>
           <td colspan="2" align="center">
             [% form.submit %] [% form.reset %]
           </td>
         </tr>
       </table>
     [% form.statetags %]
     [% form.end %]

Thanks for Catalyst, it's great! And it was extremely easy to get 
FormBuilder plugged in. I'm a convert. (If anyone has suggestions on the 
plugin, please let me know).

Cheers,

Nate Wiger
FormBuilder Author
www.formbuilder.org