NAME
CSV::Template - A CSV templating module derived from HTML::Template
SYNOPSIS
use CSV::Template;
my $csv = CSV::Template->new(filename => "t/test.tmpl");
$csv->param(report_title => "My Report");
$csv->param(report_data => [
{ a1 => 1, b1 => 2, c1 => 3 },
{ a2 => 2, b2 => 4, c2 => 6 },
{ a3 => 3, b3 => 6, c3 => 9 },
]);
print $csv->output();DESCRIPTION
This is really just a subclass of HTML::Template that does some minor post processing of the output. Since HTML::Template really just operates on plain text, and not HTML specifically, it dawned on me that there is no reason why I should not use HTML::Template (and all my HTML::Template friendly data structures) to generate my CSV files as well.
Now this is by no means a full-features CSV templating system. Currently it serves my needs which is to display report output in both HTML (with HTML::Template) and in CSV (to be viewed in Excel).
METHODS
It is best to refer to the HTML::Template docs, we only implement one method here.
- output
-
We do some post processing of the normal HTML::Template output here to make sure our display comes out correctly, by basically removing any totally blank lines from our output.
The reason for this is that when writing code for a template it is more convient to do this:
E<lt>TMPL_LOOP NAME="test_loop"E<gt> E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="one"E<gt>,E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="two"E<gt>,E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="three"E<gt>, E<lt>/TMPL_LOOPE<gt>Than it is to have to do this:
E<lt>TMPL_LOOP NAME="test_loop"E<gt>E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="one"E<gt>,E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="two"E<gt>,E<lt>TMPL_VAR NAME="three"E<gt>, </TMPL_LOOPE<gt>The first example would normally leave an extra line in the output as a consequence of formating our template code the way we did. The second example avoids that problem, but at the sacrifice of clarity (in my opinion of course).
To remedy this problem, I decided that any empty lines should be removed from the output. If you desire a blank line in your output, then simply put a single comma on that line. Excel should see and understand this as a blank line (at least my copy does).
CAVEAT
This module makes no attempt to handle strings with embedded commas, that is the responsibilty of the template author. Personally I recommend quoting all strings in your output, just to be safe. More advanced string handling for parameters is on my "TO DO" list.
TO DO
This is really just a quick fix for now, it serves my current needs. But that is not to say that I cannot see the possibilites for more features.
- Add "width" features
-
It would be nice if we could pad lines to a constant width, so that all the lines were of equal length. This would be useful when using this to prepare files for insertion into a database, etc. It shouldnt be too hard to accomplish.
- Add string handling features
-
In a CSV file, strings with embedded comma's must be quoted properly so as not to confuse the CSV reader. This also raises the issue of quoting strings, which themselves have embedded quotes. I would like to handle this in the code, so the template author and creater of the data-structure do not have to. Unfortunately I don't know enough yet about the inner workings of HTML::Template to do that, so it will have to wait.
BUGS
None that I am aware of. Of course, if you find a bug, let me know, and I will be sure to fix it.
CODE COVERAGE
I use Devel::Cover to test the code coverage of my tests, below is the Devel::Cover report on this module test suite.
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
File stmt branch cond sub pod time total
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
/CSV/Template.pm 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 47.4 100.0
t/10_CSV_Template_test.t 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 n/a 52.6 100.0
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
Total 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Keep in mind this module only overrides one method in HTML::Template, so there is not much to cover here.
SEE ALSO
- HTML::Template
-
This module is a subclass of HTML::Template, so if you want to know how to use it you will need to refer to that module's excellent documentation.
There are also a number of other CSV related modules out there, here are a few that I looked at while trying to solve the issue that lead to the creation of this module.
- Excel::Template
-
This module is an effort to use HTML::Template data structures to generate Excel files. I looked at this module, but it is much more than I needed, so I created this. That said, if your needs are more complex than CSV::Template can solve, I suggest looking into this module.
- DBD::CSV
-
This was very much overkill for my needs, but maybe not for yours.
- Tie::CSV_File
-
This uses
tie, which I am not a fan of, to map arrays of arrays to a CSV file. It would not handle my HTML::Template data structures, but if that is not a requirement of your, give it a look.
AUTHOR
stevan little, <stevan@iinteractive.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 2004 by Infinity Interactive, Inc.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.