HTML::Macro 1.27

HTML::Macro can process HTML templates with loops, conditionals, macros and more!

SYNOPSIS

use HTML::Macro;
$htm = new HTML::Macro (template.html);
$htm->print;

sub myfunc {
$htm->declare (var, missing);
$htm->set (var, value);
return $htm->process;
}

( in template.html ):

< html >< body >
< eval expr="&myfunc" >
< if def="missing" >
Message about missing stuff...
< else / >
Vars value is #var#.
< /if >
< /eval >
< /body >< /html >

HTML::Macro is a module to be used behind a web server (in CGI scripts). It provides a convenient mechanism for generating HTML pages by combining "dynamic" data derived from a database or other computation with HTML templates that represent fixed or "static" content of a page.

There are many different ways to accomplish what HTML::Macro does, including ASP, embedded perl, CFML, etc, etc. The motivation behind HTML::Macro is to keep everything that a graphic designer wants to play with *in a single HTML template*, and to keep as much as possible of what a perl programmer wants to play with *in a perl file*. Our thinking is that there are two basically dissimilar tasks involved in producing a dynamic web page: graphic design and programming. Even if one person is responsible for both tasks, it is useful to separate them in order to aid clear thinking and organized work. I guess you could say the main motivation for this separation is to make it easier for emacs (and other text processors, including humans) to parse your files: its yucky to have a lot of HTML in a string in your perl file, and its yucky to have perl embedded in a special tag in an HTML file.

HTML::Macro began with some simple programming constructs: macro expansions, include files, conditionals, loops and block quotes. Since then weve added very little: only a define tag to allow setting values and an eval tag to allow perl function calls in a nested macro scope. Our creed is "less is more, more or less."

HTML::Macro variables will look familiar to C preprocessor users or especially to Cold Fusion people. They are always surrounded with single or double hash marks: "#" or "##". Variables surrounded by double hash marks are subject to html entity encoding; variables with single hash marks are substituted "as is" (like single quotes in perl or UNIX shells). Conditionals are denoted by the and tags, and loops by the tag. Quoting used to be done using a tag, but we now deprecate that in favor of the more familiar CFML quoting syntax: < !--- --- >.