[Catalyst] Catalyst + CDBI + TT + HTML::Element question

[Luigi Iotti]

Hi all

I'm new to Catalyst, and have a basic knowledge of Perl.
I have to maintain an app mainly built with Catalyst, Class::DBI and
Template Toolkit. The app has a template to let the user add records to a
table.
This template cycles through the tables's columns and outputs a field for
every column.
The selection fields are trated in a particular way, like this:
[% FOR column = display_columns %]
...
  [%
  SET field = table_class.to_field(column);
  IF field.tag == 'select';
    USE element_maker = Class("HTML::Element");
    SET field = field.unshift_content(element_maker.new("option",
value,""));
  END;
  %]
  <td>
  [% field.as_XML; %]
...
[% END %]

Now, the values available in the selection fields are all and only the ones
found via a has_a relationship in the CDBI definition of the table. I have
to modify the app to only present and make available some of the possibile
vaules in a certain selection field, and not all the values present in the
has_a table as it is now.
I thought to put on the stash the 'selectable' values (selectable_values
array in the sample code below), and to modify the template to contain only
the selectable values, like this:
[% FOR column = display_columns %]
...
  [% IF column != 'special_column' %]
    [%
    SET field = table_class.to_field(column);
    IF field.tag == 'select';
      USE element_maker = Class("HTML::Element");
      SET field = field.unshift_content(element_maker.new("option",
value,""));
    END;
    %]
    <td>
    [% field.as_XML; %]
  [% ELSE %]
    [%
    SET field = table_class.to_field(column);
    SET field = field.delete_content();
	FOR value = selectable_values;
         SET field = field.push_content(["option",{value =>
value.id},value.desc]);
      END;
    %]
    [% field.as_XML; %]
  ...
  [% END %]
...
[% END %]


It works, but I'm wondering if I chose the better way to do it.

Thank you in advance
Luigi