Form styled as a table not submitting

Question

I am working on a form that will allow users to edit a number of nodes at the same time. The fields I'm displaying are for a single field in all the nodes of a specific type. I want to display the form in a table, so far I've been able to get this to work, but for whatever reason, the form's submit function is not getting hit, and I can't figure out why. Here is a snippet of my form

Array
(
  [submit1] => Array
    (
        [#type] => submit
        [#value] => Save
    )

[8 & Under] => Array
    (
        [#prefix] => <div><h1>8 & Under</h1>
        [#suffix] => </div>
        [#tree] => 1
        [#theme] => standards_sc_table
        [8 & Under-402-409] => Array
            (
                [#tree] => 1
                [Girls-36-A-9329] => Array
                    (
                        [#type] => racetime
                        [#default_value] => 18.09
                        [#number_decimals] => 2
                        [#size] => 8
                    )

                [Girls-36-B-9330] => Array
                    (
                        [#type] => racetime
                        [#default_value] => 19.89
                        [#number_decimals] => 2
                        [#size] => 8
                    )

The subsequent form looks like this:

The field is a custom field that I created which works great in other places. This form has about 200 or so fields. When I click submit, the page just reloads and none of the code in the submit function is hit. When I remove the theming and/or several tree levels, the form submits.

Here is the theming code:

function theme_standards_sc_table($vars) {
  $element = $vars['element'];
  $rows = array();
  foreach(element_children($element) as $key) {
    $rows[] = array();
    $row_count = count($rows) - 1;

    foreach(element_children($element[$key]) as $field_key) {
      $rows[$row_count][] = array('data' => render($element[$key][$field_key]));
    }
  }
  $header = array('SCY A','SCY B','SCM A','SCM B','EVENT','SCY A','SCY B','SCM A','SCM B');
  return theme('table', array('header' => $header, 'rows' => $rows));
}

The code to generate the form is pretty complex, but I'll go ahead and add it in case someone can see something I'm missing.

function standards_create_sc_edit_form() {    
  /********************************************************************************    
   * Each row in $standards_data is structured like this    
   * $standards[$ag][$stroke][$distance][$course][$timestandard][$gender]    
   * and the value is a stdClass with time and nid properties    
   ********************************************************************************/    
  drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('module','standards') . '/admin.css');    
  $taxonomies = _standards_get_taxonomies();    
  $form = array(    
  );    
  $form['submit1'] = array(    
    '#type' => 'submit',    
    '#value' => 'Save'    
  );    
  $form['tax'] = array(    
    '#markup' => '<pre>' . print_r($taxonomies,true) . '</pre>'    
  );    

  $courses = array("Short Course Yards","Short Course Meters");    
  $standards = array("A","B");    
  $sexes = array("Girls","Boys");    
  $standards_data = _standards_get_data($courses,$standards);    
  foreach($standards_data as $ag => $ag_result) {    

    $form[$ag] = array(    
        '#prefix' => '<div class="standards_edit_table"><h1>' . $ag . '(' . $ag_key . ')</h1>',    
        '#suffix' => '</div>',    
        '#tree' => TRUE,    
        '#theme' => 'standards_sc_table',    
    );    
    foreach($ag_result as $stroke => $stroke_result) {    
      foreach($stroke_result as $distance => $distance_result) {    
        $fieldset_title = "{$ag}-{$stroke}-{$distance}";    
        $form[$ag][$fieldset_title] = array(    
          '#tree' => true,    

        );    
        //create fields for the A and B time standards    
        $columns = array();    
        $column_count = 0;    
        foreach($sexes as $sex) {    
          foreach($courses as $course) {    
            foreach($standards as $standard) {    
              $course_tid = $taxonomies['course']['names'][$course];    
              $sex_tid = $taxonomies['gender']['names'][$sex];    

              if(isset($distance_result[$course_tid][$standard])) {    

                $time = $distance_result[$course_tid][$standard][$sex_tid];    
                $field_title = "{$sex}-{$course_tid}-{$standard}-" . $time->nid;    
                $form[$ag][$fieldset_title][$field_title] = array(    
                  '#type' => 'racetime',    
                  '#default_value' => _racetime_integer_to_formatted($time->time,2),    
                  '#number_decimals' => 2,    
                  '#size' => 8,    
                );    

              }    

            }    

          }    
          $column_count++;    
          $form[$ag_key][$fieldset_title]['event'] = array(    
            '#markup' => $taxonomies['distance']['tids'][$distance] . " " . $taxonomies['stroke']['tids'][$stroke],    
          );    
        }    

      }    
    }    
  }    
  $form['submit2'] = array(    
    '#type' => 'submit',    
    '#value' => 'Save'    
  );    

  return $form;    
}        

function standards_create_sc_edit_form_submit($form,&$form_state) {    
  drupal_set_message("This worked");    
  drupal_goto('admin/standards');    

}    

Answer 1

Try using the Tableform API to build your form.

Answer 2

It appears the issue is related to the number of fields. There are over 800 fields in this form. When I pared the form down to a smaller size, the form submitted fine. I haven't seen any documentation that says there's a limit on the number of elements in a form, but apparently, I hit it.

Answer 3

Set: max_input_vars in php.ini to a higher value than 1000