A form management package has one goal: to help preserve the integrity of data as it moves from server to client and back again.

Most form packages do two things: validate data and serialize data as (X)HTML. Some offer additional client-side validation checks via Javascript, etc. Others offer tight integration with particular data models.

Rose::HTML::Objects does both things well. RHTMLO allows you to define form classes that represent reasonably complicated data models, providing validation and serialization.

Some developers are of the opinion that serialization is not properly the function of a form manager because it blurs the line between view and model. I disagree. Proper and correct serialization is important to the validation process, and hence vital to the model. It is but one step in a series of validation layers.

Validation happens when a human being completes a (X)HTML form, as she self-monitors her attempt to enter good and correct data (“did I spell that correctly?”). Validation may happen again before the form is submitted, using client-side Javascript. Validation happens again when the server receives the request. Again, when the form object is initialized with the submitted data. Again, when the data is committed to storage. At every step checks are made to preserve what the client submitted and verify that the data conforms with what is expected and required.

Since serialization to and from (X)HTML is part of the roundtrip all data takes, a good form management tool should be able to handle (X)HTML creation as well as server-side validation. That’s not blurring the model/view line; it’s reflecting the reality that data must be handled by human beings and the web browser is one of the best tools we currently have.

An intriguing experiment in testing parallel architecture.

It’s the OSCON time of year again. A couple of years ago I was in a hotel in Portland OR, coding up a KinoSearch implementation of Swish3. That was then. Two years later, Swish3 is really no further on, except that it has been largely refactored and is a much more stable, yet alpha, project.

Just remembering that tonight as I update the Perl bindings of Swish3 to use the new tokenization routines. It’s the kind of project that moves in fits and starts. I would have liked to have finished it years ago, but it would not be as good, since many of the refactorings I have made over the last couple of years have been the direct result of coding strategies I have learned in my $job(s) and other FOSS projects.

And I find I like my life this way, chipping away at building a better mousetrap while I sip New Belgium beer and listen to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Sure, it’s a sultry July evening, and my entire life occasionally floats through my mind like a grainy day at the beach, but hey: you only get this chance once, and building a better mousetrap is not a bad way to pass some idle moments.

I benefited from this article.