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<h1 class="headline">Template::Tutorial::Web</h1>
<h2 class="subhead">Generating Web Content Using the Template Toolkit</h1>
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<li class=""><a href="#Overview">Overview</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="#Generating_Static_Web_Content">Generating Static Web Content</a></li>
<li class="sub"><a href="#section_Using_tpage">Using tpage</a></li>
<li class="sub"><a href="#section_Using_ttree">Using ttree</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="#Dynamic_Content_Generation_Via_CGI_Script">Dynamic Content Generation Via CGI Script</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="#Dynamic_Content_Generation_Via_Apache_Mod_Perl_Handler">Dynamic Content Generation Via Apache/Mod_Perl Handler</a></li>
<li class=""><a href="#Using_Plugins_to_Extend_Functionality">Using Plugins to Extend Functionality</a></li>
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<div class="pod">
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Overview" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Overview</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
This tutorial document provides a introduction to the Template Toolkit
and demonstrates some of the typical ways it may be used for generating
web content. It covers the generation of static pages from templates
using the <a href="../tools/tpage.html">tpage</a>
and <a href="../tools/ttree.html">ttree</a>
scripts and then goes on to show dynamic content generation using CGI
scripts and Apache/mod_perl handlers.
</p>
<p>
Various features of the Template Toolkit are introduced and described
briefly and explained by use of example. For further information, see <a
href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a>, <a href="../manual/index.html">Template::Manual</a> and the various
sections within it. e.g
</p>
<pre>perldoc Template # Template.pm module usage
perldoc Template::Manual # index to manual
perldoc Template::Manual::Config # e.g. configuration options</pre>
<p>
The documentation is also available in HTML format to read online, or
download from the Template Toolkit web site:
</p>
<pre>http://template-toolkit.org/docs/</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Introduction" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Introduction</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
The Template Toolkit is a set of Perl modules which collectively
implement a template processing system.
</p>
<p>
A template is a text document with special markup tags embedded in it. By
default, the Template Toolkit uses '<code>[%</code>' and
'<code>%]</code>' to denote the start and end of a tag. Here's an
example:
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header %]</span>
People of <span class="tt">[% planet %]</span>, your attention please.
This is <span class="tt">[% captain %]</span> of the
Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council.
As you will no doubt be aware, the plans
for development of the outlying regions
of the Galaxy require the building of a
hyperspatial express route through your
star system, and regrettably your planet
is one of those scheduled for destruction.
The process will take slightly less than
<span class="tt">[% time %]</span>.
Thank you.
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
Tags can contain simple <i>variables</i> (like <code>planet</code> and
<code>captain</code>) and more complex <i>directives</i> that start with
an upper case keyword (like <code>INCLUDE</code>). A directive is an
instruction that tells the template processor to perform some action,
like processing another template (<code>header</code> and
<code>footer</code> in this example) and inserting the output into the
current template. In fact, the simple variables we mentioned are actually
<code>GET</code> directives, but the <code>GET</code> keyword is
optional.
</p>
<pre>People of <span class="tt">[% planet %]</span>, your attention please. # short form
People of <span class="tt">[% GET planet %]</span>, your attention please. # long form</pre>
<p>
Other directives include <code>SET</code> to set a variable value (the
<code>SET</code> keyword is also optional), <code>FOREACH</code> to
iterate through a list of values, and <code>IF</code>,
<code>UNLESS</code>, <code>ELSIF</code> and <code>ELSE</code> to declare
conditional blocks.
</p>
<p>
The Template Toolkit processes all <i>text</i> files equally, regardless
of what kind of content they contain. So you can use TT to generate HTML,
XML, CSS, Javascript, Perl, RTF, LaTeX, or any other text-based format.
In this tutorial, however, we'll be concentrating on generating HTML for
web pages.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Generating_Static_Web_Content" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Generating Static Web Content</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
Here's an example of a template used to generate an HTML document.
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header
title = 'This is an HTML example';
pages = [
{ url = 'http://foo.org'
title = 'The Foo Organisation'
}
{ url = 'http://bar.org'
title = 'The Bar Organisation'
}
]
%]</span>
<h1>Some Interesting Links</h1>
<ul>
<span class="tt">[% FOREACH page IN pages %]</span>
<li><a href="<span class="tt">[% page.url %]</span>"><span class="tt">[% page.title %]</span></a>
<span class="tt">[% END %]</span>
</ul>
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
This example shows how the <code>INCLUDE</code> directive is used to load
and process separate '<code>header</code>' and '<code>footer</code>'
template files, including the output in the current document. These files
might look something like this:
</p>
<p>
header:
</p>
<pre><html>
<head>
<title><span class="tt">[% title %]</span></title>
</head>
<body></pre>
<p>
footer:
</p>
<pre> <div class="copyright">
&copy; Copyright 2007 Arthur Dent
</div>
</body>
</html></pre>
<p>
The example also uses the <code>FOREACH</code> directive to iterate
through the '<code>pages</code>' list to build a table of links. In this
example, we have defined this list within the template to contain a
number of hash references, each containing a '<code>url</code>' and
'<code>title</code>' member. The <code>FOREACH</code> directive iterates
through the list, aliasing '<code>page</code>' to each item (in this
case, hash array references). The <code>[% page.url %]</code> and
<code>[% page.title %]</code> directives then access the individual
values in the hash ararys and insert them into the document.
</p>
<div class="subsection">
<div class="head">
<h2 id="section_Using_tpage" onclick="switch_subsection(this)" title="Click title to show/hide sub-section content.">Using tpage</h2>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
Having created a template file we can now process it to generate some
real output. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to use the <a
href="../tools/tpage.html">tpage</a> script. This
is provided as part of the Template Toolkit and should be installed in
your usual Perl bin directory.
</p>
<p>
Assuming you saved your template file as <i>example.html</i>, you would
run the command:
</p>
<pre>$ tpage example.html</pre>
<p>
This will process the template file, sending the output to
<code>STDOUT</code> (i.e. whizzing past you on the screen). You may want
to redirect the output to a file but be careful not to specify the same
name as the template file, or you'll overwrite it. You may want to use
one prefix for your templates (e.g. '<code>.tt</code>') and another (e.g.
'<code>.html</code>') for the output files.
</p>
<pre>$ tpage example.tt > example.html</pre>
<p>
Or you can redirect the output to another directory. e.g.
</p>
<pre>$ tpage templates/example.tt > html/example.html</pre>
<p>
The output generated would look like this:
</p>
<pre><html>
<head>
<title>This is an HTML example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Some Interesting Links</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://foo.org">The Foo Organsiation</a>
<li><a href="http://bar.org">The Bar Organsiation</a>
</ul>
<div class="copyright">
&copy; Copyright 2007 Arthur Dent
</div>
</body>
</html></pre>
<p>
The <i>header</i> and <i>footer</i> template files have been included
(assuming you created them and they're in the current directory) and the
link data has been built into an HTML list.
</p>
</div>
</div> <div class="subsection">
<div class="head">
<h2 id="section_Using_ttree" onclick="switch_subsection(this)" title="Click title to show/hide sub-section content.">Using ttree</h2>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
The <a href="../tools/tpage.html">tpage</a>
script gives you a simple and easy way to process a single template
without having to write any Perl code. The <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=ttree:Template::Tools::ttree&mode=all">ttree:Template::Tools::ttree</a> script, also distributed as part of
the Template Toolkit, provides a more flexible way to process a number of
template documents in one go.
</p>
<p>
The first time you run the script, it will ask you if it should create a
configuration file (<i>.ttreerc</i>) in your home directory. Answer
<code>y</code> to have it create the file.
</p>
<p>
The <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=ttree:Template::Tools::ttree&mode=all">ttree:Template::Tools::ttree</a> documentation describes how you can
change the location of this file and also explains the syntax and meaning
of the various options in the file. Comments are written to the sample
configuration file which should also help.
</p>
<p>
In brief, the configuration file describes the directories in which
template files are to be found (<code>src</code>), where the
corresponding output should be written to (<code>dest</code>), and any
other directories (<code>lib</code>) that may contain template files that
you plan to <code>INCLUDE</code> into your source documents. You can also
specify processing options (such as <code>verbose</code> and
<code>recurse</code>) and provide regular expression to match files that
you don't want to process (<code>ignore</code>, <code>accept</code>)>
or should be copied instead of being processed as templates
(<code>copy</code>).
</p>
<p>
An example <i>.ttreerc</i> file is shown here:
</p>
<p>
$HOME/.ttreerc:
</p>
<pre>verbose
recurse
# this is where I keep other ttree config files
cfg = ~/.ttree
src = ~/websrc/src
lib = ~/websrc/lib
dest = ~/public_html/test
ignore = \b(CVS|RCS)\b
ignore = ^#</pre>
<p>
You can create many different configuration files and store them in the
directory specified in the <code>cfg</code> option, shown above. You then
add the <code>-f filename</code> option to <code>ttree</code> to have it
read that file.
</p>
<p>
When you run the script, it compares all the files in the
<code>src</code> directory (including those in sub-directories if the
<code>recurse</code> option is set), with those in the <code>dest</code>
directory. If the destination file doesn't exist or has an earlier
modification time than the corresponding source file, then the source
will be processed with the output written to the destination file. The
<code>-a</code> option forces all files to be processed, regardless of
modification times.
</p>
<p>
The script <i>doesn't</i> process any of the files in the
<code>lib</code> directory, but it does add it to the
<code>INCLUDE_PATH</code> for the template processor so that it can
locate these files via an <code>INCLUDE</code>, <code>PROCESS</code> or
<code>WRAPPER</code> directive. Thus, the <code>lib</code> directory is
an excellent place to keep template elements such as header, footers,
etc., that aren't complete documents in their own right.
</p>
<p>
You can also specify various Template Toolkit options from the
configuration file. Consult the <a href="../tools/ttree.html">ttree</a> documentation and help
summary (<code>ttree -h</code>) for full details. e.g.
</p>
<p>
$HOME/.ttreerc:
</p>
<pre>pre_process = config
interpolate
post_chomp</pre>
<p>
The <code>pre_process</code> option allows you to specify a template file
which should be processed before each file. Unsurprisingly, there's also
a <code>post_process</code> option to add a template after each file. In
the fragment above, we have specified that the <code>config</code>
template should be used as a prefix template. We can create this file in
the <code>lib</code> directory and use it to define some common
variables, including those web page links we defined earlier and might
want to re-use in other templates. We could also include an HTML header,
title, or menu bar in this file which would then be prepended to each and
every template file, but for now we'll keep all that in a separate
<code>header</code> file.
</p>
<p>
$lib/config:
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% root = '~/abw'
home = "$root/index.html"
images = "$root/images"
email = 'abw@wardley.org'
graphics = 1
webpages = [
{ url => 'http://foo.org', title => 'The Foo Organsiation' }
{ url => 'http://bar.org', title => 'The Bar Organsiation' }
]
%]</span></pre>
<p>
Assuming you've created or copied the <code>header</code> and
<code>footer</code> files from the earlier example into your
<code>lib</code> directory, you can now start to create web pages like
the following in your <code>src</code> directory and process them with
<code>ttree</code>.
</p>
<p>
$src/newpage.html:
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header
title = 'Another Template Toolkit Test Page'
%]</span>
<a href="<span class="tt">[% home %]</span>">Home</a>
<a href="mailto:<span class="tt">[% email %]</span>">Email</a>
<span class="tt">[% IF graphics %]</span>
<img src="<span class="tt">[% images %]</span>/logo.gif" align=right width=60 height=40>
<span class="tt">[% END %]</span>
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
Here we've shown how pre-defined variables can be used as flags to enable
certain feature (e.g. <code>graphics</code>) and to specify common items
such as an email address and URL's for the home page, images directory
and so on. This approach allows you to define these values once so that
they're consistent across all pages and can easily be changed to new
values.
</p>
<p>
When you run <i>ttree</i>, you should see output similar to the following
(assuming you have the verbose flag set).
</p>
<pre>ttree 2.9 (Template Toolkit version 2.20)
Source: /home/abw/websrc/src
Destination: /home/abw/public_html/test
Include Path: [ /home/abw/websrc/lib ]
Ignore: [ \b(CVS|RCS)\b, ^# ]
Copy: [ ]
Accept: [ * ]
+ newpage.html</pre>
<p>
The <code>+</code> in front of the <code>newpage.html</code> filename
shows that the file was processed, with the output being written to the
destination directory. If you run the same command again, you'll see the
following line displayed instead showing a <code>-</code> and giving a
reason why the file wasn't processed.
</p>
<pre>- newpage.html (not modified)</pre>
<p>
It has detected a <code>newpage.html</code> in the destination directory
which is more recent than that in the source directory and so hasn't
bothered to waste time re-processing it. To force all files to be
processed, use the <code>-a</code> option. You can also specify one or
more filenames as command line arguments to <code>ttree</code>:
</p>
<pre>tpage newpage.html</pre>
<p>
This is what the destination page looks like.
</p>
<p>
$dest/newpage.html:
</p>
<pre><html>
<head>
<title>Another Template Toolkit Test Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<a href="~/abw/index.html">Home</a>
<a href="mailto:abw@wardley.org">Email me</a>
<img src="~/abw/images/logo.gif" align=right width=60 height=40>
<div class="copyright">
&copy; Copyright 2007 Arthur Dent
</div>
</body>
</html></pre>
<p>
You can add as many documents as you like to the <code>src</code>
directory and <code>ttree</code> will apply the same process to them all.
In this way, it is possible to build an entire tree of static content for
a web site with a single command. The added benefit is that you can be
assured of consistency in links, header style, or whatever else you
choose to implement in terms of common templates elements or variables.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Dynamic_Content_Generation_Via_CGI_Script" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Dynamic Content Generation Via CGI Script</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
The <a href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a> module provides
a simple front-end to the Template Toolkit for use in CGI scripts and
Apache/mod_perl handlers. Simply <code>use</code> the <a href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a> module, create an object instance
with the <a href="#method_new">new()</a> method and then call the <a
href="#method_process">process()</a> method on the object, passing the
name of the template file as a parameter. The second parameter passed is
a reference to a hash array of variables that we want made available to
the template:
</p>
<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Template;
my $file = 'src/greeting.html';
my $vars = {
message => "Hello World\n"
};
my $template = Template->new();
$template->process($file, $vars)
|| die "Template process failed: ", $template->error(), "\n";</pre>
<p>
So that our scripts will work with the same template files as our earlier
examples, we'll can add some configuration options to the constructor to
tell it about our environment:
</p>
<pre>my $template->new({
# where to find template files
INCLUDE_PATH => ['/home/abw/websrc/src', '/home/abw/websrc/lib'],
# pre-process lib/config to define any extra values
PRE_PROCESS => 'config',
});</pre>
<p>
Note that here we specify the <code>config</code> file as a
<code>PRE_PROCESS</code> option. This means that the templates we process
can use the same global variables defined earlier for our static pages.
We don't have to replicate their definitions in this script. However, we
can supply additional data and functionality specific to this script via
the hash of variables that we pass to the <code>process()</code> method.
</p>
<p>
These entries in this hash may contain simple text or other values,
references to lists, others hashes, sub-routines or objects. The Template
Toolkit will automatically apply the correct procedure to access these
different types when you use the variables in a template.
</p>
<p>
Here's a more detailed example to look over. Amongst the different
template variables we define in <code>$vars</code>, we create a reference
to a <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=CGI&mode=all">CGI</a> object and a
<code>get_user_projects()</code> sub-routine.
</p>
<pre>#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Template;
use CGI;
$| = 1;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
my $file = 'userinfo.html';
my $vars = {
'version' => 3.14,
'days' => [ qw( mon tue wed thu fri sat sun ) ],
'worklist' => \&get_user_projects,
'cgi' => CGI->new(),
'me' => {
'id' => 'abw',
'name' => 'Andy Wardley',
},
};
sub get_user_projects {
my $user = shift;
my @projects = ... # do something to retrieve data
return \@projects;
}
my $template = Template->new({
INCLUDE_PATH => '/home/abw/websrc/src:/home/abw/websrc/lib',
PRE_PROCESS => 'config',
});
$template->process($file, $vars)
|| die $template->error();</pre>
<p>
Here's a sample template file that we might create to build the output
for this script.
</p>
<p>
$src/userinfo.html:
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header
title = 'Template Toolkit CGI Test'
%]</span>
<a href="mailto:<span class="tt">[% email %]</span>">Email <span class="tt">[% me.name %]</span></a>
<p>This is version <span class="tt">[% version %]</span></p>
<h3>Projects</h3>
<ul>
<span class="tt">[% FOREACH project IN worklist(me.id) %]</span>
<li> <a href="<span class="tt">[% project.url %]</span>"><span class="tt">[% project.name %]</span></a>
<span class="tt">[% END %]</span>
</ul>
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
This example shows how we've separated the Perl implementation (code)
from the presentation (HTML). This not only makes them easier to maintain
in isolation, but also allows the re-use of existing template elements
such as headers and footers, etc. By using template to create the output
of your CGI scripts, you can give them the same consistency as your
static pages built via <a href="../tools/ttree.html">ttree</a> or other means.
</p>
<p>
Furthermore, we can modify our script so that it processes any one of a
number of different templates based on some condition. A CGI script to
maintain a user database, for example, might process one template to
provide an empty form for new users, the same form with some default
values set for updating an existing user record, a third template for
listing all users in the system, and so on. You can use any Perl
functionality you care to write to implement the logic of your
application and then choose one or other template to generate the desired
output for the application state.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Dynamic_Content_Generation_Via_Apache_Mod_Perl_Handler" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Dynamic Content Generation Via Apache/Mod_Perl Handler</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
<b>NOTE:</b> the <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Apache::Template&mode=all">Apache::Template</a> module is available from CPAN and provides a
simple and easy to use Apache/mod_perl interface to the Template Toolkit.
Although basic, it implements most, if not all of what is described
below, and it avoids the need to write your own handler. However, in many
cases, you'll want to write your own handler to customise processing for
your own need, and this section will show you how to get started.
</p>
<p>
The <a href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a> module can be
used from an Apache/mod_perl handler. Here's an example of a typical
Apache <i>httpd.conf</i> file:
</p>
<pre>PerlModule CGI;
PerlModule Template
PerlModule MyOrg::Apache::User
PerlSetVar websrc_root /home/abw/websrc
<Location /user/bin>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler MyOrg::Apache::User
</Location></pre>
<p>
This defines a location called <code>/user/bin</code> to which all
requests will be forwarded to the <code>handler()</code> method of the
<code>MyOrg::Apache::User</code> module. That module might look something
like this:
</p>
<pre>package MyOrg::Apache::User;
use strict;
use vars qw( $VERSION );
use Apache::Constants qw( :common );
use Template qw( :template );
use CGI;
$VERSION = 1.59;
sub handler {
my $r = shift;
my $websrc = $r->dir_config('websrc_root')
or return fail($r, SERVER_ERROR,
"'websrc_root' not specified");
my $template = Template->new({
INCLUDE_PATH => "$websrc/src/user:$websrc/lib",
PRE_PROCESS => 'config',
OUTPUT => $r, # direct output to Apache request
});
my $params = {
uri => $r->uri,
cgi => CGI->new,
};
# use the path_info to determine which template file to process
my $file = $r->path_info;
$file =~ s[^/][];
$r->content_type('text/html');
$r->send_http_header;
$template->process($file, $params)
|| return fail($r, SERVER_ERROR, $template->error());
return OK;
}
sub fail {
my ($r, $status, $message) = @_;
$r->log_reason($message, $r->filename);
return $status;
}</pre>
<p>
The handler accepts the request and uses it to determine the
<code>websrc_root</code> value from the config file. This is then used to
define an <code>INCLUDE_PATH</code> for a new <a href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a> object. The URI is extracted from
the request and a <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?query=CGI&mode=all">CGI</a> object is
created. These are both defined as template variables.
</p>
<p>
The name of the template file itself is taken from the
<code>PATH_INFO</code> element of the request. In this case, it would
comprise the part of the URL coming after <code>/user/bin</code>, e.g for
<code>/user/bin/edit</code>, the template file would be <code>edit</code>
located in <code>$websrc/src/user</code>. The headers are sent and the
template file is processed. All output is sent directly to the
<code>print()</code> method of the Apache request object.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="Using_Plugins_to_Extend_Functionality" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">Using Plugins to Extend Functionality</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
As we've already shown, it is possible to bind Perl data and functions to
template variables when creating dynamic content via a CGI script or
Apache/mod_perl process. The Template Toolkit also supports a plugin
interface which allows you define such additional data and/or
functionality in a separate module and then load and use it as required
with the <code>USE</code> directive.
</p>
<p>
The main benefit to this approach is that you can load the extension into
any template document, even those that are processed "statically" by
<code>tpage</code> or <code>ttree</code>. You <i>don't</i> need to write
a Perl wrapper to explicitly load the module and make it available via
the stash.
</p>
<p>
Let's demonstrate this principle using the <code>DBI</code> plugin
written by Simon Matthews (available from CPAN). You can create this
template in your <code>src</code> directory and process it using
<code>ttree</code> to see the results. Of course, this example relies on
the existence of the appropriate SQL database but you should be able to
adapt it to your own resources, or at least use it as a demonstrative
example of what's possible.
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header
title = 'User Info'
%]</span>
<span class="tt">[% USE DBI('dbi:mSQL:mydbname') %]</span>
<table border=0 width="100%">
<tr>
<th>User ID</th>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Email</th>
</tr>
<span class="tt">[% FOREACH user IN DBI.query('SELECT * FROM user ORDER BY id') %]</span>
<tr>
<td><span class="tt">[% user.id %]</span></td>
<td><span class="tt">[% user.name %]</span></td>
<td><span class="tt">[% user.email %]</span></td>
</tr>
<span class="tt">[% END %]</span>
</table>
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
A plugin is simply a Perl module in a known location and conforming to a
known standard such that the Template Toolkit can find and load it
automatically. You can create your own plugin by inheriting from the <a
href="../modules/Template/Plugin.html">Template::Plugin</a> module.
</p>
<p>
Here's an example which defines some data items (<code>foo</code> and
<code>people</code>) and also an object method (<code>bar</code>). We'll
call the plugin <code>FooBar</code> for want of a better name and create
it in the <code>MyOrg::Template::Plugin::FooBar</code> package. We've
added a <code>MyOrg</code> to the regular
<code>Template::Plugin::*</code> package to avoid any conflict with
existing plugins.
</p>
<pre>package MyOrg::Template::Plugin::FooBar;
use base 'Template::Plugin'
our $VERSION = 1.23;
sub new {
my ($class, $context, @params) = @_;
bless {
_CONTEXT => $context,
foo => 25,
people => [ 'tom', 'dick', 'harry' ],
}, $class;
}
sub bar {
my ($self, @params) = @_;
# ...do something...
return $some_value;
}</pre>
<p>
The plugin constructor <code>new()</code> receives the class name as the
first parameter, as is usual in Perl, followed by a reference to
something called a <a href="../modules/Template/Context.html">Template::Context</a> object. You don't need to worry too much about
this at the moment, other than to know that it's the main processing
object for the Template Toolkit. It provides access to the functionality
of the processor and some plugins may need to communicate with it. We
don't at this stage, but we'll save the reference anyway in the
<code>_CONTEXT</code> member. The leading underscore is a convention
which indicates that this item is private and the Template Toolkit won't
attempt to access this member. The other members defined,
<code>foo</code> and <code>people</code> are regular data items which
will be made available to templates using this plugin. Following the
context reference are passed any additional parameters specified with the
USE directive, such as the data source parameter,
<code>dbi:mSQL:mydbname</code>, that we used in the earlier DBI example.
</p>
<p>
If you don't or can't install it to the regular place for your Perl
modules (perhaps because you don't have the required privileges) then you
can set the PERL5LIB environment variable to specify another location. If
you're using <code>ttree</code> then you can add the following line to
your configuration file instead.
</p>
<p>
$HOME/.ttreerc:
</p>
<pre>perl5lib = /path/to/modules</pre>
<p>
One further configuration item must be added to inform the toolkit of the
new package name we have adopted for our plugins:
</p>
<p>
$HOME/.ttreerc:
</p>
<pre>plugin_base = 'MyOrg::Template::Plugin'</pre>
<p>
If you're writing Perl code to control the <a href="../modules/Template.html">Template</a> modules directly, then this value
can be passed as a configuration parameter when you create the module.
</p>
<pre>use Template;
my $template = Template->new({
PLUGIN_BASE => 'MyOrg::Template::Plugin'
});</pre>
<p>
Now we can create a template which uses this plugin:
</p>
<pre><span class="tt">[% INCLUDE header
title = 'FooBar Plugin Test'
%]</span>
<span class="tt">[% USE FooBar %]</span>
Some values available from this plugin:
<span class="tt">[% FooBar.foo %]</span> <span class="tt">[% FooBar.bar %]</span>
The users defined in the 'people' list:
<span class="tt">[% FOREACH uid = FooBar.people %]</span>
* <span class="tt">[% uid %]</span>
<span class="tt">[% END %]</span>
<span class="tt">[% INCLUDE footer %]</span></pre>
<p>
The <code>foo</code>, <code>bar</code>, and <code>people</code> items of
the FooBar plugin are automatically resolved to the appropriate data
items or method calls on the underlying object.
</p>
<p>
Using this approach, it is possible to create application functionality
in a single module which can then be loaded and used on demand in any
template. The simple interface between template directives and plugin
objects allows complex, dynamic content to be built from a few simple
template documents without knowing anything about the underlying
implementation.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section">
<div class="head">
<h1 id="AUTHOR" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">AUTHOR</h1>
<a href="#body" class="top" title="Back up to the top of the page" >Top</a>
</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org> <a
href="http://wardley.org/">http://wardley.org/</a>
</p>
</div>
</div>
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<h1 id="COPYRIGHT" onclick="switch_section(this)" title="Click title to show/hide section content.">COPYRIGHT</h1>
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</div>
<div class="body">
<p>
Copyright (C) 1996-2007 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.
</p>
<p>
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
</p>
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The <a href="http://template-toolkit.org/">Template Toolkit</a> is <a href="http://opensource.org/">Open Source</a> software.
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