[html-formfu] non-processing actions, WAS: Date element stopped working

On 25/03/2008, vti <viacheslav.t@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I created sample Cat app and behaves the same as my app. Sorry for the name, but
>  it is what I fill now :)

ah, the problem is that you're setting the default() after the
FormConfig action calls $form->process.

If you make any changes to the form, you need to add a
$form->process() before returning from the action subroutine.

What would be ideal - and I think has been discussed before - would be
a FormConfig action that doesn't automatically call process() - as it
can be an expensive and possibly destructive method to call twice.

I think I was initially worried about an explosion of action names, as
we already have:
    Form
    FormConfig
    FormMethod
    MultiForm
    MultiFormConfig
    MultiFormMethod

Adding non-processing actions would immediately double that number.

Maybe something like
    FormConfig('process=0')
    FormConfig('config-file', 'process=0')
would be better than adding new action names.

It might get hairy handling all possibilities though, as the
attributes don't really support multiple arguments, so we'd have to
parse the strings ourselves.
fex, with the above example we'd actually get something like:
    $VAR1 = "config-file\', \'process=0"

Carl

I know this will sound extreme, but frankly, I would just entirely
scratch the whole Catalyst::Controller::HTML::FormFu and leave it only
as a POD describing the available integration possibilities.  There is
rather not much of code there and with so many options it is spread
very thin.

And additionally multiple inheritance causes no end of problems - so
it is advisable to avoid forcing users to 'use base' to use your
library.

Cheers,
Zbigniew

But why Text field changes and Date does not? Almost in every controller I do
have FormConfig attr on a sub method and inside I do
$form->model('DBIC')->default_values( $dbic_object ) and it seems like
working... If I correctly understood you - this shouldn't work either..

Appreciate your time and help. Thanks a lot.

Meanwhile I removed FormConfig and cut some code from that module and everything
works like you wrote. Sorry for my confusion :(

Thanks a lot!

Maybe it is ok just not to call ->process inside of FormConfig and not bother
about flags and stuff? It's up to the user when it is time to build the form
and FormConfig just creates config :-)

If you look at the HTML::FormFu::Element::Date code, you can see that Date =
only parses the 'default' attribute in _date_defaults(), which is called in=
_add_elements(), which is called in -- you guessed it -- process().

Regards,
Byron