/ 
Posy-0.70
/ Posy

NAME

Posy - a website generator inspired by blosxom

VERSION

This describes version 0.70 of Posy.

SYNOPSIS

# use the posy_static script
posy_static --flavour_dir /home/fred/posy/flavours ...

# use the posy CGI script
http://www.example.com/posy.cgi/top/wibbles/?theme_css=Midnight

# from within a script
require Posy;

my @plugins = qw(Posy::Core Posy::Plugin::TextTemplate);
Posy->import(@plugins);
Posy->run(%args);

# implicit loading from within a script
use Posy qw(Posy::Core Posy::Plugin::TextTemplate);

DESCRIPTION

This is a simple website content management system inspired by the design of blosxom. The filesystem is the database, there are flavour templates, and plugins. However, this system doesn't require one to write one's entry files in a particular format; one can choose from pure HTML, plain text, or blosxom format. And other formats can be dealt with if one writes a plugin to deal with them.

This distribution includes a CGI script (posy.cgi) and two command-line scripts (posy_static, posy_one) which use the Posy engine to process input data files into web-page output.

It also includes a number of plugins.

Terms

A few terms:

data_dir, data directory

The directory where the input data files are kept. This need not be the same directory as the posy.cgi script or any other script. This is set up with sub-directories in a hierarchical fashion and chiefly contains the files holding the web content you wish to display.

state_dir, state directory

The directory where "state" files are written. Thus this needs to be a directory writable by the script, which may need special care when using Posy with a CGI script, since the user and permissions tend to be tricky with CGI scripts.

config_dir, config directory

The directory where configuration files are kept, in a hierarchical manner which mirrors that of the data directory. This defaults to being the same directory as the data_dir.

flavour_dir, flavour directory

The directory where flavour files are kept (see "flavour"), in a hierarchical manner which mirrors that of the data directory.

full path, full filename

The absolute location of a given file; the absolute pathname.

path

(a) the relative location of a file (relative to the data directory or to the top of the website, depending on context) (b) the current request path (which may or may not be the relative location of a file)

path-type

The type of request path. This can be "entry", for an individual file, "category", for a sub-directory, "chrono" for a dated request, "top_entry" for an entry at the top of the website, "top_category", for the very root page, or "file" for a file which is not an entry.

basename

The "base" name of a file. So a file called /wibbles.txt would have a basename of "wibbles".

chunk

A given output page is pasted together from several chunks, each of which has a "flavour" template for it. The chunks are:

content_type

The MIME-type of the output page. Usually this is text/html, but some variations may call for text/plain or something else.

The "head" part of the page; which usually includes the opening <html> tag, the <head> content, and the opening <body> tag and any initial content required.

A header part of a page; something which may or may not be repeated over the page, depending on how its contents change.

entry

The template for the actual page content; for pages which source multiple entry-files per page, this is repeated for each entry file. An entry file is just an individual input content file.

The "foot" part of the page; usually contains trailing content, and the closing </body> and </html> tags.

flavour

The Posy system, like the blosxom system, enables use of multiple template-sets by giving them a "flavour" extension, which can be parsed from the initial request path by either the extension of the request path, or by a "flav" parameter. One can then set up a different template-set for each flavour, and customize the look of the output pages while keeping the content separate.

CLASS METHODS

import

require Posy;

Posy->import(@plugins);

This needs to be run before "run". See Posy::Core for more information.

This loads plugins, modules which subclass Posy and override its methods and/or make additional methods. The arguments of this method are the module names, in the order in which they should be loaded. The given modules are required and arranged in an "is-a" chain. That is, Posy subclasses the last plugin given, which subclasses the second-to-last, up to the first plugin given, which is the base class.

This can be called in two different ways. It can be called implicitly with the "use" directive, or it can be called explicitly if one 'requires' Posy rather then 'use'-ing it.

The advantage of calling this explicitly is that one can set the plugins dynamically, rather than hard-coding them in the calling script.

(idea taken from Module::Starter by Andy Lester and Ricardo Signes)

REQUIRES

File::Spec
File::stat

File::Find
Data::Dumper
Storable
CGI::Minimal

Test::More

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

perl Build.PL
./Build
./Build test
./Build install

Or, if you're on a platform (like DOS or Windows) that doesn't like the "./" notation, you can do this:

perl Build.PL
perl Build
perl Build test
perl Build install

In order to install somewhere other than the default, such as in a directory under your home directory, like "/home/fred/perl" go

perl Build.PL --install_base /home/fred/perl

as the first step instead.

This will install the files underneath /home/fred/perl.

You will then need to make sure that you alter the PERL5LIB variable to find the modules, and the PATH variable to find the script.

Therefore you will need to change: your path, to include /home/fred/perl/script (where the script will be)

PATH=/home/fred/perl/script:${PATH}

the PERL5LIB variable to add /home/fred/perl/lib

PERL5LIB=/home/fred/perl/lib:${PERL5LIB}

SEE ALSO

perl(1).

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to the author.

AUTHOR

Kathryn Andersen (RUBYKAT)
perlkat AT katspace dot com
http://www.katspace.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (c) 2004-2005 by Kathryn Andersen

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.