Re: [cgiapp] repeating form fields

[Mark Stosberg <suppressed>]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Brett Sanger wrote:

> > What hacking is required with Data::FormValidator.  You can specify a
> > regexp to define your form fields.
>
> But it is not required that all the sets be filled in -- the hacking
> isn't with D::FV, it's with the data passed to it and the input profile.
>
> If I'm displaying 3 subforms, I have to break that data up into three
> chunks and evalute each subform separately, then look at those results
> and make a decision.  D::FV wants to evaluate the form as a whole, so I
> either break up my data, or I create a monstrous input profile.
>
> I know this sounds unnecessarily complex, but it's come up for 3
> different projects already, so I was eager to see if anyone else had
> solved the problem.

Is the problem is that you are doing something like editting N widgets
on the same screen where each widget has the same set of form elements
associated with it?

If that's the case, I handle it by adding a unique prefix or suffix to
the names of the elements in each "sub-form".

Data::FormValidator already handles this well in that you define
required fields, optional fields and constraints with a regular
expressions, so it's easy to apply logic for "all fields whose name
begins with... ".

The elegant long-term solution to this might be the "XForms" standard
proposed by the W3C:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/
  Which allows you submit complex data structures (I think) instead of
  the simple name/value pairs of the CGI protocol.

My proposal to extend D::FV has a slightly different focus: handling a
group checkboxes with all the same name, or a selection list with
multiple values, not necessarily multiple groups of checkboxs. :)

  Mark

 --
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   Mark Stosberg            Principal Developer
   suppressed     Summersault, LLC
   765-939-9301 ext 202     database driven websites
 . . . . . http://www.summersault.com/ . . . . . . . .

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