NAME

HTML::LoL - construct HTML from pleasing Perl data structures

SYNOPSIS

  use HTML::LoL;

  &hl(sub { print shift },
      [body => {bgcolor => 'white'},
       [p => 'Document body', ...], ...]);

See EXAMPLE section below.

DESCRIPTION

This module allows you to use Perl syntax to express HTML. The function hl() converts Perl list-of-list structures into HTML strings.

The first argument to hl() is a callback function that's passed one argument: a fragment of generated HTML. This callback is invoked repeatedly with successive fragments until all the HTML is generated; the callback is responsible for assembling the fragments in the desired output location (e.g., a string or file).

The remaining arguments to hl() are Perl objects representing HTML, as follows:

[TAG, ...]

TAG is a string (the name of an HTML element); remaining list items are any of the forms described herein. Corresponds to <TAG>...</TAG>. If TAG is an "empty element" according to %HTML::Tagset::emptyElement, then the </TAG> is omitted.

[TAG => {ATTR1 => VAL1, ATTR2 => VAL2, ...}, ...]

Corresponds to <TAG ATTR1="VAL1" ATTR2="VAL2" ...>...</TAG>. (As above, </TAG> is omitted if TAG is an "empty element.") Each ATTR is a string. Each VAL is either a string, in which case the value gets HTML-entity-encoded when copied to the output, or a list reference containing a single string (viz. [VAL]) in which case the value is copied literally.

Finally, for boolean-valued attributes, VAL may be hl_bool(BOOLEAN), where BOOLEAN is a Perl expression. If BOOLEAN is true, the attribute is included in the output; otherwise it's omitted.

Any string

Strings are copied verbatim to the output after entity-encoding.

hl_noquote(...)

Suppresses entity-encoding of its arguments.

hl_requote(...)

Reenables entity-encoding of its arguments (use it inside a call to hl_noquote()).

hl_preserve(...)

Normally, HTML::LoL tries to optimize the whitespace in the HTML it emits (without changing the meaning of the HTML). This suppresses that behavior within its arguments.

hl_entity(NAME)

Includes the HTML character-entity named NAME.

The return value of hl() is the result of the last call to the callback function. This means it's possible to write

  &hl(sub { $accumulator .= shift }, ...)

to have hl() return a string containing the completely rendered HTML.

EXAMPLE

  &hl(sub { print shift },
      [table => {border => 2, width => '80%'},
       [tr =>
        [td => {nowrap => &hl_bool(1)}, 'This & that'],
        [td => {nowrap => &hl_bool(0)}, '<b>This is not bold</b>'],
        [td => [b => 'But this is']],
        [td => &hl_noquote('<b>And so is this</b>')]]]);

prints:

  <table width="80%" border="2">
   <tr>
    <td nowrap>This &amp; that</td>
    <td>&lt;b&gt;This is not bold&lt;/b&gt;</td>
    <td><b>But this is</b></td>
    <td><b>And so is this</b></td>
   </tr>
  </table>

SEE ALSO

perllol(1), HTML::Tree(3)

This module was inspired by the new_from_lol() function in the HTML::Tree package by Gisle Aas and Sean M. Burke.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2000-2002 Bob Glickstein.

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

AUTHOR

Bob Glickstein - http://www.zanshin.com/bobg/ - bobg@zanshin.com