[html-formfu] Consistent approach to forms for single/multiple items?

[Will Hawes]

Most forms deal with a single "thing" at once - editing a single database
row, sending an email message, etc.

But what about forms that deal with multiple "things" at once? As an
example, a tabular display of products with a text field next to each,
allowing the user to enter an arbitrary quantity of each product to add to a
shopping basket and use a single button to submit the quantities for all
products at once.

Product | Quantity
-------------------------------
Foo       |  { text field 1 }
-------------------------------
Bar       |  { text field 2 }
-------------------------------

Would you use the ->render method, meaning form elements have to be created
for the "Product" column of each row when all it needs to display is a
simple text value? Or would it be better to use a template to render the
form, having generated something like this beforehand:

[
  { product =3D> 'Foo', quantity =3D> \$text_field_1 },
  { product =3D> 'Bar', quantity =3D> \$text_field_2 },
  ...
]

Either way seems feasible and probably there are other ways I've not thought
of. In any case it would be nice to generate both "types" of form in a
single consistent way. How do others do this?
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