CGI::FormBuilder is a cool if sprawling module to automatically build HTML forms with sticky widgets, JS & Perl validation.

I love the idea, but the interface is a bit too dictatorial for my liking. But while I wait for a more modular, pluggable version, here's is a horrible little hack to gather the bits that would normally get passed to TT2. 

package AHP::FakeTemplate;

=head1  DESCRIPTION

Tames CGI::FormBuilder.

The class pretends to be a Template in order to catch the
CGI::FormBuilder vars passed to process so that we can 
use them outside of the callback.

=head1  SYNPOSIS

    my $fb_vars;
    my $form = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
        ...
        template => {  
            engine => AHP::FakeTemplate->new_fake(\$fb_vars),
            type => 'TT2',
            template => 'ignored',
        },
    );
    $form->render();
    ...
    $template->process('my.tt2', { form => $fb_vars, ... });

    my.tt2:
    [% form.start %]
    [% FOREACH f = form.fields %]
        [%# "<pre>"; Dumper.dump(f) | html ; "</pre>" %]
        [% f.required ? "<b>$f.label</b>" : f.label %]
        [% f.field %] [% f.comment %]<br>
        [% IF f.invalid %] Missing or invalid entry.  [% END %]
        <br>
    [% END %]
    [% form.submit %] <br>
    [% form.end %]

=cut
use Carp ();
use Template ();
@ISA = ('Template'); # It's not really, but C::FB checks
                     # I'd prefer we couldn't act like one
use strict;

sub new { Carp::croak "$_[0] is not really a Template"; }

sub new_fake {
    my ($class, $target_ref) = @_;
    return bless $target_ref, $class;
}   

# This sets the reference passed into new_fake
sub process {
    my ($target_ref, $tmpl_ignored, $tt2vars, $tt2output_ref) = @_;
    $$target_ref = $tt2vars;
    $$tt2output_ref = '';
    return 1;
}
 
1;

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In reply to Taming CGI::FormBuilder (Hack) by bsb

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