Update: I've made a not exact copy of this page at the p5 wiki (as suggested by Aristotle).

There are many web form processing modules on CPAN - but no one place to compare the features of them. This meditation purpose is to start gathering this comparison information. A wiki page would be more convenient for that - but for now I have no access to some suitable wiki (but as soon as the Catalyst wiki is usable again I'll repost the info there).

I am waiting for suggestions on both how to do this kind of comparison and what to compare. Below is a quick start. I plan to modify this page for a long time.

HTML - HTML generation. It looks like all form processing modules provide validation - so the validation column did not provide any discrimination value and I removed it.
Module name Synopsis HTML Integration with DB
Form::Processor In an application you might want a controller to handle creating and updating a "User" record. And not want to write much code. Here's using Catalyst as an example: 
package MyApplication::Controller::User;
use strict;
use MyApplication::Form::User;

sub edit : Local {
  my ( $self, $c, $id ) = @_;

  # Create the form object
  my $form = MyApplication::Form::User->new( $id );

  # Update or create the user record if form posted 
  # and form validates
  $form->update_from_from( $c->request->parameters  )
    if $c->form_posted;


  $c->stash->{form} = $form;
}

[download]
 no - but there is a promise of a 'plug-in system' Form::Processor::Model::CDBI
---
HTML::FormFu 
use HTML::FormFu;

my $form = HTML::FormFu->new;
    
$form->load_config_file('form.yml');
$form->process( $cgi_query );

if ( $form->submitted_and_valid ) {
  # do something with $form->params
}
else {
  # display the form
  $template->param( form => $form );
}

[download]
 yes DBIx::Class::HTML::FormFu
---
HTML::Widget now defunct to be replaced by HTML::FormFu above yes HTML::Widget::DBIC
---
CGI::Application::Plugin::ValidateRM This only works with CGI::Application - but Data::FormValidator alone can be used outside of it. 
# This is the run mode that will be validated. Notice that it accepts
# some errors to be passed in, and on to the template system.
sub form_display {
  my $self = shift;
  my $errs = shift;
 
  my $t = $self->load_tmpl('page.html');
 
  $t->param($errs) if $errs;
  return $t->output;
}
 
sub form_process {
  my $self = shift;
 
  use CGI::Application::Plugin::ValidateRM (qw/check_rm/);
  my ($results, $err_page) = $self->check_rm('form_display','_form_pro
+file');
  return $err_page if $err_page; 

  #..  do something with DFV $results object now
 
  my $t = $self->load_tmpl('success.html');
  return $t->output;
}
 
sub _form_profile {
  return {
    required => 'email',
    msgs => {
      any_errors => 'some_errors', 
      prefix => 'err_',
    },
  };
}

[download]
 yes -
---
CGI::FormBuilder 
use CGI::FormBuilder;

# Assume we did a DBI query to get existing values
my $dbval = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;

# First create our form
my $form = CGI::FormBuilder->new(
    name     => 'acctinfo',
    method   => 'post',
    stylesheet => '/path/to/style.css',
    values   => $dbval,   # defaults
);

# Now create form fields, in order
# FormBuilder will automatically determine the type for you
$form->field(name => 'fname', label => 'First Name');
$form->field(name => 'lname', label => 'Last Name');

# Setup gender field to have options
$form->field(name => 'gender',
    options => [qw(Male Female)] );

# Include validation for the email field
$form->field(name => 'email',
    size => 60,
    validate => 'EMAIL',
    required => 1);

# And the (optional) phone field
$form->field(name => 'phone',
    size => 10,
    validate => '/^1?-?\d{3}-?\d{3}-?\d{4}$/',
    comment  => '<i>optional</i>');

# Check to see if we're submitted and valid
if ($form->submitted && $form->validate) {
  # Get form fields as hashref
  my $field = $form->fields;

  # Do something to update your data (you would write this)
  do_data_update($field->{lname}, $field->{fname},
      $field->{email}, $field->{phone},
      $field->{gender});

  # Show confirmation screen
  print $form->confirm(header => 1);
} else {
  # Print out the form
  print $form->render(header => 1);
}

[download]
 yes no

Updates: