NAME

 sbase - Create class which will provide access to HTML files as modules

SYNOPSIS

 sbase $DOCUMENT_ROOT/..

DESCRIPTION

The first thing to never ever forget about HTML::Seamstress is this:

 There is no magick *anywhere*

If you know object-oriented Perl and you are comfortable with conceptualizing HTML as a tree, then you can never get confused. Everything that Seamstress offers is based on improving the synergy of these two powers.

So, let's look at one way to manipulate HTML, completely Seamstress-free:

 use HTML::TreeBuilder;
 my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_file('/usr/www/file.html');
 $tree->this;
 $tree->that;
 $tree->as_HTML;

Let's make it easier to find file.html:

 package www::file;
 use base qw(HTML::Seamstress);

 sub new {
     HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_file('/usr/www/file.html');
 }

So now our code is this:

 use www::file;
 my $tree = www::file->new;
 $tree->this;
 $tree->that;
 $tree->as_HTML;

Same amount of code. It's just we dont have to manage pathnames.

Now, Seamstress actually does something a little more flexible in the package it creates for your class. Instead of a long absolute path, it abstracts away the root of the absolute path, creating a class for your HTML file like this:

 package www::file;
 use base qw(HTML::Seamstress::Base); # slight difference

 sub new {
     HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_file(
       HTML::Seamstress::Base->comp_root() . 'file.html';
   )
 }

And the mainline code uses www::file just as before.

So now we see some flexibility. The method HTML::Seamstress::Base::comp_root() can be configured to return values based on configuration settings and can vary based on deployment setup (e.g. production versus dev).

So, sbase creates the HTML::Seamstress::Base package for you. It will work fine for most setups. If your root is not hardcoded and must be derived by a series of function calls, then simply modify Base.pm to fit your setup. Where I work, our Base class looks like this:

 package HTML::Seamstress::Base;
 use base qw(HTML::Seamstress);

 use Wigwam::Config;

 use vars     qw($comp_root);

 # put a "/" on end of path - VERY important
 BEGIN         { $comp_root = $Wigwam::Config{'PLAYPEN_ROOT'} . '/' }

 use lib         $comp_root;

 sub comp_root { $comp_root }

 1;

Wigwam is a tool for specifying all software and file path dependencies of your software: http://www.wigwam-framework.com. So, we get our