NAME

Text::MicroMason::Mason - Simple Compiler for Mason-style Templating

SYNOPSIS

Create a Mason object to interpret the templates:

    use Text::MicroMason;
    my $mason = Text::MicroMason->new();

Use the execute method to parse and evalute a template:

    print $mason->execute( text=>$template, 'name'=>'Dave' );

Or compile it into a subroutine, and evaluate repeatedly:

    $coderef = $mason->compile( text=>$template );
    print $coderef->('name'=>'Dave');
    print $coderef->('name'=>'Bob');

Templates stored in files can be run directly or included in others:

    print $mason->execute( file=>"./greeting.msn", 'name'=>'Charles');

DESCRIPTION

The Text::MicroMason::Mason class provides lexer and assembler methods that allow Text::MicroMason to handle most elements of HTML::Mason's template syntax.

Template Syntax

The template syntax supported by Text::MicroMason and some useful template developer techniques are described in Text::MicroMason::Devel.

Compatibility with HTML::Mason

HTML::Mason is a full-featured application server toolkit with many fatures, of which only the templating functionality is emulated.

The following sets of HTML::Mason features are supported by Text::MicroMason:

• Template interpolation with <% expr %>

• Literal Perl lines with leading %

• Named %args, %perl, %once, %init, %cleanup, and %doc blocks

• The $m mason object, although with many fewer methods

• Expression filtering with |h and |u (via -Filter mixin)

The following sets of HTML::Mason features are not supported by Text::MicroMason:

• No %attr, %shared, %method, or %def blocks.

• No $r request object.

• No shared files like autohandler and dhandler.

• No mod_perl integration or configuration capability.

Contributed patches to add these features of HTML::Mason would be welcomed by the author.

Private Methods

The following internal methods are used to implement the public interface described above, and may be overridden by subclasses and mixins.

lex_token

  ( $type, $value ) = $mason->lex_token();

Supports HTML::Mason's markup syntax.

Attempts to parse a token from the template text stored in the global $_ and returns a token type and value. Returns an empty list if unable to parse further due to an error.

assembler_rules()

Returns a hash of text elements used for Perl subroutine assembly. Used by assemble().

Supports HTML::Mason's named blocks of Perl code and documentation: %once, %init, %cleanup, and %doc.

assemble_args

Called by assemble(), this method provides support for Mason's <%args> blocks.

SEE ALSO

For a full-featured web application system using this template syntax, see HTML::Mason.

For an overview of this distribution, see Text::MicroMason.

This is a subclass intended for use with Text::MicroMason::Base.

For distribution, installation, support, copyright and license information, see Text::MicroMason::ReadMe.