Form API: the next generation

Form API is perhaps the most loved and talked about API shipped with Drupal core. As such, it may very well be the most hated API too.

The API in its current form has been around for a while; we've been traversing hash-flagged array since time immemorial and AHAH has never really lived up to its name.

This session will demonstrate some of FAPI's shortcomings and those of the renderable array system on which it is built. Most of them can be changed without changing the architecture, but what if we do change the fundamentals of how forms are processed? Will that make us happier and Drupal better?

This session has no intention of showing the path to a better form API, but rather to demonstrate why we should think of updating the API, and shows ideas of how we might do that. A rough example module that incorporates some ideas can be found at http://github.com/bartfeenstra/fapitng.