[Catalyst] Catalyst FormBuilder plugin on CPAN

Thu Aug 17 02:33:41 CEST 2006

Nate Wiger wrote:
> 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).

You're going to hate me for this, but ... wouldn't this be better as a 
controller base class rather than a plugin? It would be -slightly- more work 
to use but it'd allow it to drop in to any existing app, even one that already 
loads a plugin that defines a $c->form method?

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