Try fetchall_arrayref( {} ); instead of fetchall_arrayref();, see if that works. Oh, and get rid of all your foreach stuff. Changing your fetchall_arrayref() call puts it in the format H::T is expecting for a TMPL_LOOP.

Oh - you probably will want to, at some point, change your database.

1. You're storing a bunch of stuff in a comma-delimited list. That means you need a cross-reference table. Something like (in Oracle's DDL):

   CREATE TABLE USER_BRANCH_XREF (
       USER    VARCHAR2(20)  NOT NULL  REFERENCES USERS(USERNAME)
      ,BRANCH  NUMBER        NOT NULL  REFERENCES BRANCHES(ID)
      ,CONSTRAINT PRIMARY KEY (USER, BRANCH)
   );
   [download]

2. Then, you have your users in one table and your branches in another. If a user has a connection to a branch, then the user's id and the branch's id are both put into the XREF table. So, if you now want to find all branches for a given user, do something like:

   SELECT branches.id    AS value
         ,branches.name  AS branch
     FROM users
         ,branches
         ,user_branch_xref
    WHERE users.username = ?
      AND user_branch_xref.user = users.username
      AND user_branch_xref.branch = branches.id
   [download]

3. Then, you take the return value from fetchall_arrayref({}) from executing that statement (passing the $user in to the execute() call) and pass it directly to H::T.

Putting it all together, you would have:

my $sql = <<__END_SQL__;
SELECT branches.id    AS value
      ,branches.name  AS branch
  FROM branches
      ,user_branch_xref
 WHERE user_branch_xref.user = ?
   AND user_branch_xref.branch = branches.id
__END_SQL__

my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached( $sql ) or die $DBI::errstr;
$sth->execute( $user ) or die $DBI::errstr;

my $template = HTML::Template -> new(
    filename => "../xm_dialogs/editmenu.tmpl",
);

$template->param(
    branches => $sth->fetchall_arrayref( {} ),
);
[download]