What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion)

roho has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have been tasked at work to research HTML form builders for an upcoming Catalyst project. The project is relatively small, but like anything, has the potential to grow into something much larger. I have super searched the monastery and googled for form builder module recommendations, but found very little. I have searched CPAN and found the following form building modules that have recent activity:

Catalyst::Controller::FormBuilder
Rose::HTML::Form
CGI::FormBuilder
HTML::FormFu
Form::Factory
(others ...)

Have you used any of these modules (including "others")? I am looking for community input as I experiment with various modules to help with the selection process. I tried HTML::FormFu a year ago and wished for for something more developer-friendly, so that (along with scalability and how nicely it plays with Catalyst) are some of the criteria I am using in my evaluation.

Thanks in advance for your comments, suggestions, recommendations, etc.

"Its not how hard you work, its how much you get done."

Comment on What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion)

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Re: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on Sep 29, 2011 at 17:10 UTC
I much prefer to write my own forms as a template and use HTML::Template to process them. I find that form builders don't always do things the way I want them to do and I'd rather not wrestle with them to force them to do so. Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg	[reply]
Re: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by keszler (Priest) on Sep 29, 2011 at 17:12 UTC
HTML::FormHandler is my preference. Also used by CatalystX::SimpleLogin, which I find handy. You might also take a look at Form::Sensible and Form::Sensible::Reflector::DBIC.	[reply]
Re^2: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by ibarton (Initiate) on Sep 30, 2011 at 12:10 UTC
I'll second the HTML::FormHandler plug - I've used it for a few recent project with great success. DBIx::Class integration was pretty simple with a couple generic controller actions to do CRUD.	[reply]
Re^2: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Sep 30, 2011 at 21:07 UTC
Hey! I know that one! ;-) Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're god damn right I'm living in the fucking past	[reply]
Re: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Sep 29, 2011 at 17:56 UTC
Here’s what I would do ... cobble up the simplest possible actual test/demonstration of what each form handler produces (does it look good? is it easy to modify? if so, demonstrate how to do it), and set each demo in an actual Catalyst environment. You really do need to have a thing that you can objectively look at, both in terms of results-obtained and the steps-required to actually do this in your actual situation. Then all of you will know.
Re^2: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by GrandFather (Saint) on Sep 29, 2011 at 19:50 UTC
"Simplest possible" is fine until you find that the stand out nicest system was designed exactly for your simplest case but completely fails to allow you to do some of the non-trivial stuff required by your real application. Sure, you can get a feel for how the tools work by writing a Hello World application using each tool, but that is no where near enough to actually evaluate their performance over the long haul for real tasks. To avoid writing a major application using each of the candidate tools a good technique is to ask other people for their opinion then filter the candidate tools down to a small number for serious assessment. True laziness is hard work	[reply]
Re^3: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Sep 30, 2011 at 12:18 UTC
Graciously acknowledging what you say, I submit that both of our only-slightly contrasting points of view are valid. Use other people’s opinions perhaps to rank the packages in descending order of likelihood, then get your feet wet with those packages which look-n-feel the best. Then, as we both seem to say, you’ve got to get into the “non-trivial stuff required by your, real application.” Whether or not you start with a friendly Hello, you do need, I think, to make a serious attempt to “evaluate their performance over the long haul for real tasks” before committing to a final decision. Because, of course, that’s going to be a marriage: you’re going to wake up in the morning looking at your choice for a long time to come.
Re: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Sep 30, 2011 at 21:07 UTC
I'm going to parrot blue_cowdawg and say: None of them. Build your own forms, and use Data::Manager to deal with validation. There's a really nice Message::Stack plugin for Catalyst (Catalyst::Plugin::MessageStack) that integrates with Data::Manager models. Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're god damn right I'm living in the fucking past	[reply]
Re: What is the best HTML form builder (in your opinion) by Anonymous Monk on Oct 31, 2011 at 23:42 UTC
Roho, I've just started on a similar journey ...after a 13 years hiatus in perl programming.... So I've selected Mojolicious to provide the url/routing, just because its so new and fun :-). For form handling I started grepping cpan and the net for various form modules and libraries. But isn't that the old skool way of looking at things? I mean, the validation/form rendering should be agnostic to whether the server api is handled by perl or ruby, right? Just json/rest hand shaking is the ideal, no? Take a look at backbone.js and backbone.validation . Isn't that the direction we're heading? Regards, Dutsjj	[reply]