* and then Jeff Eaton declared....

Time for some shameless patch pimping for Drupal 4.8/5.0.

FormAPI has made lots of things much much easier, but has also made other things harder. Namely, dynamic forms that are built based on user input, or that submit to themselves and add additional fields. (building them is easy, but validation, submission, etc gets incredibly complicated.)

<http://drupal.org/node/74660> http://drupal.org/node/74660 aims to simplify that process for modules that need very complex multi-step forms. It breaks up the currently-monolithic drupal_get_form() function into bite sized ones like drupal_build_form(), drupal_render_form(), and so on. drupal_get_form() continues to work as it always has, but modules in need of complicated multi-step and multi-form processes can sidestep it completely, using the more granular functions.

This has always been possible, but it required copy-and-paste re-use of almost a hundred lines of code from drupal_get_form. With this patch, it's easy for those who need it and transparent to those who don't.

I've not reviewed it, but it sounds like a great idea. I recently upgraded a 4.6 extension to 4.7 which had a beastly form such as you describe in it, the patch, assuming it does what you say, would have made it a damn sight simpler. -- Nick Wilson http://performancing.com/user/1