NAME

XML::Template - Perl XML template instantiation

SYNOPSIS

  use XML::Template;
  my %namespace = (
	      foo => "bar",
  );

 my $interp = XML::Template->new("examples");
 print $interp->compose(\%namespace, "example.xmlt");

 <template>
    $(var) or ${var}
    ${DATE}
    ${TIME}
    ${NOW}

    <assign name="not_ok" value="ok"/>
    <include src="foobar.xmlt"/>

    <repeat name="RESULTS">
      ${NUMBER}: ${RESULT}
    </repeat>
    
    <with name="nested_hash">
    ${result}
    </with>

    <with name="ENV">
    ${SCRIPT_NAME}
    </with>
 </template>

DESCRIPTION

The XML::Template module provides for assembling templates using a simple XML tag markup. The code is not limited to parsing XML documents. It works on any text document, including (of course) HTML, but is labeled as an XML template system because it uses XML tags for the markup used.

I don't pretend that this is a unique idea. There are *many* Perl template systems. What separates this one from the pack (AFAIK) is that it supports more than just variable substituion. Using XML markup, you can include other template files, perform simple variable assignment, nested namespaces, and best of all, perform simple looping constructs. For kicks, it also offers the CGI environment variables as builtins, as well as the server's current date, time and date/time string.

In short the module offers what I see as the 80/20 rule. It doesn't allow full Perl constructs (see something like ePerl or HTML::Embperl for that) but implements the 20% of the features that make up 80% of the needs for templates. It also serves as an excellent pre-processor for either ePerl or HTML::Embperl or the like. ;-)

To call it, simply call as shown in the synopsis. Pass it a directory when calling new() and data and a file when calling compose. Any text inside any <template></template> tags will be interpreted. The remaining text will be completely ignored, useful for those situations where you want to use '$' characters, or simply want the parser to run faster.

The template language supports the following syntax:

<template></template> -- Define the sections of the file to interpret

$(variable) or ${variable} -- identifiers are word characters (including the underscore)

<include src="filename" /> -- filename is rooted by the path given at new()

<assign name="variable" value="..."/> -- assign "..." to identifier "variable" <assign value="..." name="variable"/>

<with name="nested"></with> -- use the nested hash for variable substitution

<repeat name="repeated"></repeat> -- repeat for every item in nested hash

In addition, the <with> tag supports ENV for including environment variables, and variable substitution supports DATE, TIME, and NOW, the system's default date, time, and date-time strings.

AUTHOR

Geoff Hutchison <ghtuchis@wso.williams.edu>

SEE ALSO

ePerl(1), HTML::Embperl