HTML forms Vs laravel-form-builder Vs Forms & HTML

I really, really don't see the advantage of Form builders.

can some one explain the benefits of them?

it seems like a lot of hassle with not much gain.

I am with @robrogers3. Maybe I am just old school, but I do not see the big advantage of having Form builders. Forms are easy enough to manage without all the extra baggage of builder code.

There's a reason why Laravel removed the HTML Form Builder from the Laravel core (which is what Laravel Collective Forms is), and it's pretty much what the above 2 people stated. They provide no real benefit, but seem to cause a lot of problems for people if you search through the forum. Just stick with HTML.

ps. if the problem is it's a hassle creating the form html and such, use a snippet.

in laracasts jeffrey way does this a lot. must IDE's and editors support this?

@tristanisginger what's your editor?

After years of Sublime I've recently started using PHPStorm and live templates thanks to Laracasts. Interestingly the live template example Jeffery uses in How to be a PHPstorm wizard is for a form builder text input!

I found using live templates and a form builder to create a blog post very quick.

I'll build my next form raw as all three answers I've had say avoid!

i have tons of snippets for forms.

try emmet too it works great.

I find stuff like this to be pretty painful without.

Setting a default value when creating, and re-populating the value when editing:

HTML

@foreach($roles as $role)
    <div class="radio">
        <label>
            <input type="radio" name="role" value="{{ $role->id }}" 
                {{ old('role', $user->role_id) == $role->id ? 'checked' : '' }}
                {{ is_null($user->role_id) && $role->id == 1 ? 'checked' : '' }}
            >
            {{ $role->name }}
        </label>
    </div>
@endforeach

Form Builder

@foreach($roles as $role)
    <div class="radio">
        <label>
            {{ Form::radio('role', $role->id, 1) }}
            {{ $role->name }}
        </label>
    </div>
@endforeach

I really like and using Laravel Collective forms.

1. you can extend Form or Html build can add more custom fields in Form or html builder, you can create twitter bootstrap form elements with extend.
2. Form::model method help you fill all input fields with database save value on edit.
3. or Form validation keeps old value in form element.

We only stick to HTML forms because of future issues. For example, if we wanted to move an application from Laravel to another framework or we had to pass an application onto another company who don't use Laravel it would take a bit of time to refactor or change things

@mecca6 They would have to re-factor it any way.