HTML::Template - a Perl module to use HTML Templates CHANGES 1.8 - New Feature: global_vars option makes outer variables visible inside loops. - Bug Fix: Use File::Spec to construct pathnames. This means that HTML::Template should now work on VMS and MacOS. (Larry Moore) - Bug Fix: loop_context_vars were broken in an unusual case. (Todd Larason) - Bug Fix: ESCAPE was broken in some cases. DESCRIPTION This module attempts make using HTML templates simple and natural. It extends standard HTML with a few new HTML-esque tags - <TMPL_VAR>, <TMPL_LOOP>, <TMPL_INCLUDE>, <TMPL_IF>, <TMPL_UNLESS> and <TMPL_ELSE>. The file written with HTML and these new tags is called a template. It is usually saved separate from your script - possibly even created by someone else! Using this module you fill in the values for the variables, loops and branches declared in the template. This allows you to seperate design - the HTML - from the data, which you generate in the Perl script. This module is licenced under the GPL. See the LICENCE section of the README. AVAILABILITY This module is available on SourceForge. Download it at: http://download.sourceforge.net/HTML-Template/HTML-Template-1.8.tar.gz The module is also available on CPAN. You can get it using CPAN.pm or go to: http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/S/SA/SAMTREGAR/ MOTIVATION It is true that there are a number of packages out there to do HTML templates. On the one hand you have things like HTML::Embperl which allows you to freely mix Perl with HTML. On the other hand lie home-grown variable substitution solutions. Hopefully the module can find a place between the two. One advantage of this module over a full HTML::Embperl-esque solution is that it enforces an important divide - design and programming. By limiting the programmer to just using simple variables and loops in the HTML, the template remains accessible to designers and other non-perl people. The use of HTML-esque syntax goes further to make the format understandable to others. In the future this similarity could be used to extend existing HTML editors/analyzers to support this syntax. An advantage of this module over home-grown tag-replacement schemes is the support for loops. In my work I am often called on to produce tables of data in html. Producing them using simplistic HTML templates results in CGIs containing lots of HTML since the HTML itself could not represent loops. The introduction of loop statements in the HTML simplifies this situation considerably. The designer can layout a single row and the programmer can fill it in as many times as necessary - all they must agree on is the parameter names. For all that, I think the best thing about this module is that it does just one thing and it does it quickly and carefully. It doesn't try to replace Perl and HTML, it just augments them to interact a little better. And it's pretty fast. DOCUMENTATION The documentation is in Template.pm in the form of POD format perldocs. Even the above text might be out of date, so be sure to check the perldocs for the straight truth. CONTACT INFO This module was written by Sam Tregar ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) for Vanguard Media (http://www.vm.com). You can join the HTML::Template mailing-list by sending a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
