Automatically generating Customer Attribute Form Fields

Whe开发者_开发知识库n you add customer attributes, Magento's admin dashboard for customer's automatically generates the relative form element for that new attribute.

Is there a way to do the same thing on the front end via a controller in a module?

nope, the frontend customer fields are hard coded, check out the phtml inside customer/form to see it.

What are you trying to achieve? Customer attributes are displayed on the form if "Show on frontend" is enabled. However those fields aren't saved from frontend by default. You need to extend fieldsets in your module for that, see config.xml in core Mage/Customer module

EDIT: actually that is true for enterprise edition, on CE you have to edit register.phtml (preferably by making a copy in your theme)