[Catalyst] Catalyst Interface to Tree Structure Pulled from DB.

[Thomas Hartman]

I would like advice on perlish, and ideally Catalyst-y ways, to create
a web interface to display interactive tree data structures, pulling
from an underlying db. The db data underlying the tree would look like
this (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsmart00/html/treelib2.jpg),
and the web page should have an interface similar to this
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsmart00/html/treelib1.jpg).
That was from an ms-access form discussed here
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsmart00/html/sa00j14.asp).
The form (some kind of active x thing I think) has a lot of bells and
whistles: nodes open up when you click on the plus, you can specify
how many levels the tree should expand to, etc.

I don't expect a web interface to have the kind of flash that the
access form had, but how close can I get? Is there any hope of
approaching this kind of prettiness/functionality with a pre-cooked
catalyst helper? Or some other way to do this with catalyst/perl?
Maybe even with this newfangled AJAX thing, or something?

If possible, I would like to be able to insert new nodes into the tree
from the web interface. I do *not* need to be able to rearrange
existing nodes, or delete nodes/trees. (If there's functionality to do
this, great, just for my purposes I probably wouldn't be needing
this.)

If there are no perlish modules/sample apps that already do this, I
would also appear pointers to solutions that do this in other non-perl
(but still webby) ways.

PS I have started a bookmark collection on implementing trees with a
web interface (http://del.icio.us/tphyahoo/tree), and will update this
with good tips I get from any ensuing discussion.

Initially posted to perlmonks. (http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=515973)