NAME

HTML::Seamstress - HTML::Tree subclass for HTML templating via tree rewriting

SYNOPSIS

HTML::Seamstress provides "fourth generation" dynamic HTML generation (templating).

In the beginning we had...

First generation dynamic HTML production

First generation dynamic HTML production used server-side includes:

<p>Today's date is   <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" --> </p>

Second generation dynamic HTML production

The next phase of HTML generation saw embedded HTML snippets in Perl code. For example:

sub header {
  my $title = shift;
  print <<"EOHEADER";
  <head>
     <title>$title</title>
  </head>
  EOHEADER
}

Third generation dynamic HTML production

The 3rd generation solutions embed programming language constructs with HTML. The language constructs are either a real language (as is with HTML::Mason) or a pseudo/mini-language (as is with PeTaL, Template or HTML::Template). Let's see some Template code:

<p>Hi there [% name %], are you enjoying your stay?</p>

Talkin' bout them generations...

Up to now, all approaches to this issue tamper with the HTML in some form or fashion:

Generation 1 adds SSI processing instructions
Generation 2 rips the HTML apart and adds programming elements
Generation 3 sprinkles programming constructs in the HTML

Enter fourth generation dynamic HTML production

The fourth generation of HTML production is distinguished by no need for tampering with the HTML. There are a wealth of XML-based modules which provide this approach (XML::Twig, XML::LibXML, XML::TreeBuilder, XML::DOM). HTML::Seamstress is the one CPAN module based around HTML and HTML::Tree for this approach.

PHILOSOPHY and MOTIVATION of HTML::Seamstress

When looking at HTML::Seamstress, we are looking at a uniquely positioned 4th-generation HTML generator. Seamstress offers two sets of advantages: those common to all 4th generation htmlgens and those common to a subclass of HTML::Tree.

Reap 4th generation dynamic HTML generation benefits

What advantages does this fourth way of HTML manipulation offer? Let's take a look:

Separate HTML development and its programmatic modification

The contents of the document remain legal HTML/XML that can be be developed using standard interactive design tools. The flow of control of the code remains separate from the page. Technologies that mix content and data in a single file result in code that is often difficult to understand and has trouble taking full advantage of the object oriented programming paradigm.

Reduced learning curve

If you have a strong hold on object-oriented Perl and a solid understand of the tree-based nature of HTML, then all you need to do is read the manual pages showing how Seamstress and related modules offer tree manipulation routines and you are done.

Extension just requires writing new Perl methods - a snap for any object oriented Perler.

Static validation and formatting

Mixing Perl and HTML (by any of the generation 1-3 approaches) makes it impossible to use standard validation and formatting tools for either Perl or HTML.

Two full-strength programming languages: HTML and Perl

Perl and HTML are solid technologies with years of effort behind making them robust and flexible enough to meet real-world technological demands.

Multiple views and reuses of the same element

Because manipulator and manipulated are separate, we can choose manipulators and/or stack them at will.

Parallel generation of a single page natural

A tree of HTML usually contains subtrees with no inter-dependance. They therefore can be manipulated in parallel. If a page contains 5 areas each of which takes N time, then one could realize an N-fold speedup.

Reap the benefits of using HTML::Tree

Pragmatic HTML instead of strict X(HT)ML

The real world is unfortunately more about getting HTML to work with IE and maybe 1 or 2 other browsers. Strict XHTML may not be acceptable under time and corporate pressures to get things to work with quirky browsers.

Rich API and User Contributions

HTML::Tree has a nice large set of accessor/modifier functions. If that is not enough, then take a gander at Matthew Sisk's contributions: http://search.cpan.org/~msisk/ as well as HTML::Element::Library.

Seamstress contains no voodoo elements whatsoever

If you know object-oriented Perl and know how to rewrite trees, then everything that Seamstress offers will make sense: it's just various boilerplates and scripts that allow your mainline code to be very succinct: think of it as Class::DBI for HTML::Tree.

unifying HTML and the HTML processing via a Perl class

Seamstress contains two scripts, spkg.pl and sbase.pl which together make it easy to access and modify an HTML file in very few lines of startup code. If you have a file named html/hello_world.html, Seamstress makes it easy for that to become the Perl module html::hello_world with a new() method that loads and parses the HTML into an HTML::Tree.
a Catalyst View class with meat-skeleton processing

The meat-skeleton HTML production concept is discussed below. Catalyst::Seamstress::View is all ready to go for rendering simple or more complex pages.
Loading in the HTML::Tree support classes

One a Perl class has been built for your HTML, it has HTML::Element and HTML::Element::Library as superclasses, ready for you to use to rewrite the tree.

Seamstress is here to help you use HTML::Tree, that's all.

Unify HTML and the processing of the HTML via a Perl class

Let's see why this is a good idea. In Mason, your Perl and HTML are right there together in the same file. Same with Template. Now, since Seamstress operates on the HTML without touching the HTML, the operations and the HTML are not in the same file. So we create a Perl module to glue the HTML file to the operations we plan to perform on it.

This module (auto-created by spkg.pl and perhaps sbase.pl) has a constructor new(), which grabs the HTML file and constructs an HTML::Element tree from it and returns it to you.

It also contains a process() subroutine which processes the HTML in some way: text substitutions, unrolling list elements, building tables, and whatnot.

Finally, it contains a fixup() subroutine. This subroutine is designed to support the meat-skeleton paradigm, discussed above. The process() subroutine generated the $meat. After <$meat> has been placed in $skeleton, there may be some page-specific processing to the whole HTML page that you want to: pop in some javascript, remove a copyright notice, whatever. That's what this routine is for.

Now that I've said all that, please understand that you are perfectly free to call new() and do what you want with the HTML tree. You don't have to use process() and fixup(). But they are there and are used by Catalyst::View::Seamstress to make meat-skeleton dynamic HTML development quick-and-easy (and non-greasy).

A Perl class created by spkg.pl

Here is our venerable little HTML file:

metaperl@pool-71-109-151-76:/ernest/dev/catalyst-simpleapp/MyApp/root/html$ cat hello_world.html 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
 <head>
   <title>Hello World</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h1>Hello World</h1>
   <p>Hello, my name is <span id="name">dummy_name</span>.
   <p>Today's date is <span id="date">dummy_date</span>.
 </body>
</html>

Now let's abstract this as a Perl class:

metaperl@pool-71-109-151-76:/ernest/dev/catalyst-simpleapp/MyApp/root/html$ spkg.pl --base_pkg=MyApp::View::Seamstress --base_pkg_root=`pwd`/../../lib hello_world.html
comp_root........ /ernest/dev/catalyst-simpleapp/MyApp/root/
html_file_path... /ernest/dev/catalyst-simpleapp/MyApp/root/html/
html_file........ hello_world.html
html_file sans... hello_world
hello_world.html compiled to package html::hello_world
metaperl@pool-71-109-151-76:/ernest/dev/catalyst-simpleapp/MyApp/root/html$

Now lets see what html::hello_world looks like. Everything other than process() was auto-generated:

package html::hello_world;

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::TreeBuilder;


use base qw(MyApp::View::Seamstress); 

our $tree;


sub new {
 my $file = __PACKAGE__->comp_root() . 'html/hello_world.html' ;

 -e $file or die "$file does not exist. Therefore cannot load";

 $tree =HTML::TreeBuilder->new;
 $tree->parse_file($file);
 $tree->eof;
 
 bless $tree, __PACKAGE__;
}

sub process {
 my ($self, $c, $stash) = @_;

 $tree->look_down(id => $_)->replace_content($stash->{$_})
     for qw(name date);
}

sub fixup { $tree }

1;

The meat-skeleton paradigm

This section is written to help understanding of Catalyst::View::Seamstress for people who want to use Seamstress as the view for their Catalyst apps.

HTML pages typically have meat and a skeleton. The meat varies from page to page while the skeleton is fairly (though not completely) static. For example, the skeleton of a webpage is usually a header, a footer, and a navbar. The meat is what shows up when you click on a link on the page somewhere. While the meat will change with each click, the skeleton is rather static.

The perfect example of

Mason accomodates the meat-skeleton paradigm via an autohandler and $m->call_next(). Template accomodates it via its WRAPPER directive.

And Seamstress? Well, here's what you _can_ do:

1 generate the meat, $meat: This is typically what you see in the body part of an HTML page
2 generate the skeleton, $skeleton: This is typically the html, head, and maybe some body
3 put the meat in the skeleton

So, nothing about this is forced. This is just how I typically do things and that is why Catalyst::View::Seamstress has support for this.

In all honesty, the meat-skeleton paradigm should be supported here and called from Catalyst::View::Seamstress. But the problem is, I don't want to create an abstract API here unless I have used the meat-skeleton paradigm from one other framework besides Catalyst. Then I will have a good idea of how to refactor it so any framework can make good use of the paradigm.

USAGE

Now it's time to look at some examples. Before doing so, it is imperative that you understand the tree structure of HTML.

Understand that HTML is a tree

The best representation of this fact is this slide right here:

http://xmlc.objectweb.org/doc/xmlcSlides/xmlcSlides.html#de

If you understand this (and maybe the rest of the slides), then you have a good grip on seeing HTML as a tree.

HTML::Tree::AboutTrees does also teach this, but it takes a while before he gets to what matters to us. It's a fun read nonetheless.

Now that we've got this concept under our belts let's try some full examples.

Install and Setup Seamstress

The first thing to remember is that Seamstress is really just convenience functions for HTML::Tree. You can do entirely without Seamstress. It's just that my daily real-world obligations have lead to a set of library functions (HTML::Element::Library) and a convenient way to locate "templates" (spkg.pl) that work well on top of HTML::Tree

move spkg.pl and sbase.pl onto your execution $PATH

sbase.pl and spkg.pl are used to simplify the process of parsing an HTML file into HTML::Treebuilder object. In other words instead of having to do this in your Perl programs:
```
use HTML::TreeBuilder;

my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_file('/usr/htdocs/hello.html');
```
You can do this:
```
use htdocs::hello;

my $tree = htdocs::hello->new;
```
The lines of code is not much different, but abstracting away absolute paths is important in production environments where the absolute path may come from who knows where via who knows how.
run sbase.pl

sbase.pl will ask you 2 very simple questions. Just answer them. When it is finished, it will have installed a package named HTML::Seamstress::Base on your @INC. This module contains one function, comp_root() which points to a place you wouldn't typically have on your @INC but which you must have because your HTML file and corresponding .pm abstracting it are going to be there.

run spkg.pl

In the default seutp, no options need be supplied to this script. They are useful in cases where you have more than one document root or want to inherit from more than one place.

metaperl@pool-71-109-151-76:~/www$ spkg.pl moose.html
comp_root........ /home/metaperl/
html_file_path... /home/metaperl/www/
html_file........ moose.html
html_file sans... moose
moose.html compiled to package www::moose

load your abstracted HTML and manipulate it

Now, from Perl, to get the TreeBuilder object representing this HTML file, we simply do this:
```
use www::moose;

my $tree = www::moose->new;
# manipulate tree...
$tree->as_HTML;
```
In a mod_perl setup, you would want to pre-load your HTML and Class::Cache was designed for this very purpose. But that's a topic for another time.

In a setup with HTML files in numerous places, I recommend setting up multiple HTML::Seamstress::Base::here, HTML::Seamstress::Base::there for each file root. To do this, you will need to use the --base_pkg and --base_pkg_root options to spkg.pl
That's it!

Now you are ready to abstract away as many files as you want with the same spkg.pl call. Just supply it with a different HTML file to create a different package. Then use them, new them and manipulate them and $tree->as_HTML them at will.

Now it's time to rock and roll!

Text substitution == node mutation

In our first example, we want to perform simple text substitution on the HTML template document:

<html>
<head>
  <title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
  <p>Hello, my name is <span id="name">dummy_name</span>.
  <p>Today's date is <span id="date">dummy_date</span>.
</body>
</html>

First save this somewhere on your document root. Then compile it with spkg.pl. Now you simply use the "compiled" version of HTML with API calls to HTML::TreeBuilder, HTML::Element, and HTML::Element::Library.

use html::hello_world; 

my $tree = html::hello_world->new; 
$tree->look_down(id => name)->replace_content('terrence brannon');
$tree->look_down(id => date)->replace_content('5/11/1969');
print $tree->as_HTML;

replace_content() is a convenience function in HTML::Element::Library.

If-then-else == node(s) deletion

<span id="age_dialog">
   <span id="under10">
      Hello, does your mother know you're 
      using her AOL account?
   </span>
   <span id="under18">
      Sorry, you're not old enough to enter 
      (and too dumb to lie about your age)
   </span>
   <span id="welcome">
      Welcome
   </span>
</span>

Again, compile and use the module:

use html::age_dialog;

my $tree = html::dialog->new;

$tree->highlander
   (age_dialog =>
    [
     under10 => sub { $_[0] < 10} , 
     under18 => sub { $_[0] < 18} ,
     welcome => sub { 1 }
    ],
    $age
   );

 print $tree->as_HTML;

 # will only output one of the 3 dialogues based on which closure 
 # fires first

And once again, the function we used is the highlander method, also a part of HTML::Element::Library.

The following libraries are always available for more complicated manipulations:

Looping == child/sibling proliferation

Table unrolling, pulldown creation, li unrolling, and dl unrolling are all examples of a tree operation in which you take a child of a node and clone it and then alter it in some way (replace the content, alter some of its attributes), and then stick it under its parent.

Functions for use with the common HTML elements --- <table>, <ol>, <ul>, <dl>, <select> are documented in HTML::Element::Library and are prefaced with the words "Tree Building Methods".

What Seamstress offers

Beyond the "compilation" support documented above, Seamstress offers nothing more than a simple structure-modifying method, expand_replace(). And to be honest, it probably shouldn't offer that. But once, when de-Mason-izing a site, it was easier to keep little itty-bitty components all over and so I wrote this method to facilitate the process.

Let's say you have this HTML:

     <div id="sidebar">

	<div class="sideBlock" id=mpi>mc::picBar::index</div>

	<div class="sideBlock" id=mnm>mc::navBox::makeLinks</div>

	<div class="sideBlock" id=mg>mc::gutenBox</div>

      </div>

In this case, the content of each sideBlock is the name of a Perl Seamstress-style class. As you know, when the constructor for such a class is called an HTML::Element, $E, will be returned for it's parsed content.

In this case, we want the content of the div element to go from the being the class name to being the HTML::Element that the class constructs. So to inline all 3 tags you would do the following;

$tree->look_down(id => $_)->expand_replace for qw(mpi mnm mg);

METHODS

->html()

This method takes __FILE__, and optionally a desired $extension (defaults to 'html' if not given) and changes the extension on __FILE__ from .pm to $extension. This works well for common situations.

What Seamstress works with

Class::Cache

Useful in mod_perl environments and anywhere you want control over the timing of object creation.

The family of HTML::Tree contributions

SUPPORT

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/seamstress-discuss

AUTHOR

Terrence Brannon, tbone@cpan.org

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank

Chris Winters for exposing me to XMLC
Paul Lucas for writing HTML_Tree

http://homepage.mac.com/pauljlucas/software/html_tree/

HTML_Tree is a C++ HTML manipulator with a Perl interface. Upon using his Perl interface, I began to notice limitations and extended his Perl interface. The author was not interested in working with me or my extensions, so I had to continue on a separate path.
johnnywang for his post about dynamic HTML generation

http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=505080.
Matthew Sisk and John Porter for lively personal discussions
Matthew Hodgson (Arathorn on #catalyst)

for brainstorming with me on how to produce a Catalyst view for Seamstress

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

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

To install HTML::Seamstress, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.

cpanm

cpanm HTML::Seamstress

CPAN shell

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install HTML::Seamstress

For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

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