PHP Framework for form-intensive application

I've just done a similar but much more simple application using codeIgniter, which has a pretty nice form helper

Examples of code:

form_hidden('userName', 'johndoe');
// Would produce: <input type="hidden" name="username" value="johndoe" />

form_input('username', @$_POST['userName'])
// Would produce an input populated with a variable  from the post array

And you can do allsorts using arrays etc:

$js = 'id="shirts" onChange="some_function();"';

echo form_dropdown('shirts', $options, 'large', $js);

While I'll certainly add my support behind the excellent and simple to learn CodeIgniter I fear everyone so far is missing the elephant in the room regarding this question.

To be perfectly honest I don't think any framework is going to make assembling an application with 50+ forms per page simpler or easy for Developers without much experience. Especially with the added requirement of ajax ready support for dropdown dependencies.

Having said that, if you're looking for power and flexibilty I'd select Zend. If you're looking for straight simplicity I'd choose CodeIgniter.

Code Igniter has some very good documentation regarding forms and handles a lot of the complexities for you.

The form validation class is documented here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/form_validation.html

There is also a form helper class which makes creating forms very easy.

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/helpers/form_helper.html

It is certainly easier than building a web app from scratch!

_{(source: codeigniter.com)}