If I understood your original question correctly (and I am not sure I did), you would like to generate an HTML table where each row contains some contact information and a checkbox. At the top of the form is a set of group actions. When the form is processed you want to apply the group actions to each table row where the checkbox is checked.

I'm not terribly familiar with the modules central to this issue, but since you seem to have gone quite a while without a solution, I'm going to give it a shot based on reading the module documentation.

As near as I can tell from the documentation, CGI::FormBuilder only knows how to build one form in a template, not an array of forms. It seems that your first way of working around this was to treat all of the table rows as one big form and use <tmpl_loop> to generate each row. But this created another problem: how do you tell one row from another? CGI::FormBuilder only returns a hash keyed by field name. If all rows in the table have the same field names, how do you know which row is assigning the value to the field?

In your various posts you've tried at least two solutions:

• give each row of the table a checkbox with a different field name. That didn't work so...
• invent a new template tag that will "make it work"

I don't think either will work because the core problem isn't in CGI::FormBuilder nor in HTML::Template, but rather in how the two work together. CGI::FormBuilder is expecting you to generate a single form, not an array of forms. It appears to be matching the name of the field definition in your field array with the name of the field in the template definition. If your field array contains definitions for fields "checkbox_1" and "checkbox_2", but your template only contains a field "checkbox", CGI::FormBuilder doesn't know how to connect the field definitions to the template definition.

If you look at all of the examples for CGI::FormBuilder they all involve non-repeating forms. If you really want to use CGI::FormBuilder and HTML::Template together to build a table, I suspect that you will need to manually generate a template where each table row contains a different set of form fields, doing something like this (pseudo code):

#start table template
my $sTemplate='<table><tmpl_var form-start>...<tr>...</tr>';

#generate table rows
foreach my $iRow (0... $#loopData) {

   #generate field definitions qualified by row id
   #  e.g. FNAME_$iRow
   #       LNAME $iRow
   #       CHECKBOX $iRow

   # append field definitions to row fields
   push @aFields, @aRowFields;

   # generate a template string using the above fieldnames
    $sTemplate .= "<tr>...<tmpl-var field-checkbox_$iRowId>...</tr>";
}

#finish table
$sTemplate='<tmpl_var form-end>INSERT_NEW_RECORD_HERE</table>';

#write template string out to a temp file
#generate form using the temp file
my $oForm = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
   fields   => \@aFields, 
   ...
   template => 'tmpForm.tmpl'
);
$oForm->render();
[download]

Best, beth

<table>

  <tmpl_var form-start>

    <tr>
      <td><tmpl_var form -submit></td>
    </tr>

    <tmpl_loop name="PHONES">
      <tr>
        <td><tmpl-var field-looped-CHECKBOX></td>
        <td><tmpl-var name=FNAME></td>
      </tr>
    </tmpl_loop>

  <tmpl_var form-end>

  INSERT_NEW_RECORD_HERE

</table>
[download]

I agree with ELISHEVA that adding an id to each field may be the way to go.

I'm a great fan of H::T partly because it is lightweight and it would be a shame if it got mucked about with. :-)

btw, <tmpl-var...> throws an error in H::T.

  my ($html);
  if ($form->submitted && $form->validate) {
    my $field = $self->{'q'}->Vars;
    if($form->submitted eq 'Process Group Action'){
      if($field->{'group_action'} eq 'add_to_group'){
        $self->_add_phone_numbers_to_group($field);
        $self->{'q'}->delete('_submitted_Group_Actions');
      } elsif($field->{'group_action'} eq 'remove_from_group'){
        $self->_remove_phone_numbers_from_group($field);
        $self->{'q'}->delete('_submitted_Group_Actions');
      } elsif($field->{'group_action'} eq 'edit_group'){
        $self->_edit_group($field);
        $self->{'q'}->delete('_submitted_Group_Actions');
      } elsif($field->{'group_action'} eq 'delete_from_list'){
        $self->_delete_phone_numbers_from_list($field);
        $self->{'q'}->delete('_submitted_Group_Actions');
      }
    }
    $html = $form->render();
  } else {
    $html = $form->render();
  }
[download]

  my ($html);
  if ($form->submitted && $form->validate) {
    my $field = $self->{'q'}->Vars;
    if($form->submitted eq 'Process Group Action'){
      if ...
  }
  $html = $form->render();
[download]

  my @loop_data;
  my $phone_lines;
  while (my $phone = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()){
    my $name = 'group_action_' . $phone->{'phone_number_id'};
    my $this_phone_line = $phone_line;
    my $links = $self->_get_links_for_phone_list($phone->{'phone_numbe
+r_id'});
    $this_phone_line =~ s/CHECKBOX/<tmpl_var field-$name>/;
    $this_phone_line =~ s/FNAME/$phone->{'fname'}/;
    $this_phone_line =~ s/LNAME/$phone->{'lname'}/;
    $this_phone_line =~ s/EMAIL/$phone->{'email'}/;
    $this_phone_line =~ s/PHONE/$phone->{'phone'}/;
    $this_phone_line =~ s/LINKS/$links/;
    $phone_lines .= $this_phone_line . "\n";

    $form->field(
           name => $name,
          label => '',
           type => 'checkbox',
        options => [ ' ' ],
         sticky => 0,
                );

  }

  open('TEMPLATE_COMPILED','>',$template_compiled);
  open('TEMPLATE','<',$template);
  while(<TEMPLATE>){
    if(m/PHONE_LINE/){
      $_ =~ s/PHONE_LINE/$phone_lines/;
    }
    print TEMPLATE_COMPILED $_;
  }
  close('TEMPLATE');
  close('TEMPLATE_COMPILED');
[download]

I don't think I will be creating that new module to extend HTML::Template at this time. But thanks anyway. And thank you Beth for pointing the way.