Hello, This may be the worng place to ask a question, but I think I am right. I have already searched some of the archives to look for an answer and I can't find anything. Anyway, if my post is in the worng place, please direct me to the correct location. PROBLEM: I am trying to get some default values to be set in a formbuilder generated form. We should be able to pass these values to the formbuilder object by way of a hash. Here is the code from the formbuilder website. 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;
use CGI::FormBuilder;

$user = $ENV{REMOTE_USER};        # from .htaccess
$dbh  = DBI->connect(...);        # your db here
$sth  = $dbh->prepare("select * from pers where user = $user");
$defs = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;

@fields = qw(first_name last_name email phone
             address city state zip mail_list);

$form = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
             method => 'post',
             fields => \@fields,
             values => $defs,     # values from hashref
             required => 'ALL'
        );

[download]
Here is the script that I am trying to make work. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w 

use strict;
use Template;
use CGI;
use CGI::FormBuilder;
use Connect;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";


my $cgi = new CGI;

my $defs ; # hash for default values

my $dbh = data_connect();
# link to module that craetes DBI connection


#get the default values to load the form

my $stmt = "SELECT * FROM imp_lodging WHERE visitor_id = ?
                 AND check_out IS NULL";

my $sth = $dbh->prepare($stmt);

$sth->execute($cgi->param('visitor_id'));

$defs = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;



# for debugging to se if the hash was populated
for ( keys %{$defs} ){

    print "$_ => $defs->{$_} <br>";
}



my $form = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
                    action => 'edit_visitors.pl',
                    method => 'post',
                       fields => [qw(visitor_id location check_in chec
+k_out)],
                    values => $defs,
                    validate => {
                        location => 'INT',
                        check_in => '/^[0-1]\d-[0-3]\d-\d\d\d\d$/',
                        check_out => '/^[0-1]\d-[0-3]\d-\d\d\d\d$/',
                    },
                    template => {
                        type => 'TT2',
                        template => 'visitor_edit.tt2',
                        variable => 'form',
                        engine => {
                            INCLUDE_PATH => '/inetpub/wwwroot/' .
                                            'lzprotocols.partners.org/
+' .
                                            'socialservices/src',
                            },
                        },
                );

[download]
In my debugging portion, the hash prints with the proper data from the database, however the values do not get loaded as defaults on the form. If I just "hard code" some random values into the hash rather than do the database lookup, the values do get passed through as defaults to the form. Is there some difference between doing a database lookup to populate a hash and hardcoding one directly? Does anyone have any experience like this with CGI::Formbuilder? Also, this is perl 5.8 on Apache 2.x running on a win32 machine. Thank you.

In reply to Setting Default Values using CGI::FormBuilder by nakajima

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