[Catalyst] Rails-like form helpers

[Jon Warbrick]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Ash Berlin wrote:

> Maybe look at FormBuilder. (?)

Definitely a possibility, but I haven't got my head around it yet...
 
> Also suggest a situation that is "complex then solutions like HTMLWidget 
> can conveniently cope with" and I'll tell you if it is (or will be - 
> refactor is coming)

person, telephone_number and email_address have multiple columns. person 
has_many telephone_numbers, person has_many email_addresses. I want a form 
to manage information about a particular person, including the ability to 
update existing telephone numbers and email addresses, and with buttons to 
delete any particular number and to add new ones. I don't think HTMLWidget 
can do that (though I'd be happy to be proved wrong).

There is also the issue that a complex form it may need careful manual 
layout of the various controls to make it usable. As I see it this is 
something for the designer to do, working in the relevant templates, 
whereas with HTMLWidget at least the ordering and grouping, and to some 
extent the layout, is defined in the model class. I accept there is much 
that can be done about this with CSS, but I also suspect that there are 
some things that can't.

Jon.

-- 
Jon Warbrick
Web/News Development, Computing Service, University of Cambridge