NAME

Template::Library::HTML - Template library for building basic HTML pages

DESCRIPTION

NOTE: This documentation is incomplete and may be incorrect in places.

The 'html' template library is distributed as part of the Template Toolkit. It can be found in the 'templates' sub-directory of the installation directory. 

    use Template;

    my $tt2 = Template->new({
	INCLUDE_PATH => '/usr/local/tt2/templates',
    });

For a portable way to determine the installation 'templates' directory, you can use the Template::Config->instdir() class method. 

    use Template;

    my $tt2 = Template->new({
	INCLUDE_PATH => Template::Config->instdir('templates'),
    });

You should now be able to access the html library as, for example: 

    [% INCLUDE html/header %]

Note that some of the more basic elements don't give you much more than the raw HTML tags. In many cases you might be well advised to stick to regular HTML rather than complicating matters by the use of template elements.

e.g. 

    <table>
      . . .
    </table>

vs 

    [% WRAPPER html/table %]
       . . .
    [% END %]

However, the use of template elements to generate the underlying HTML does have some important benefits, particularly as the constructs start to get more complicated and more magical.

See the example in the 'examples' sub-directory of the distribution directory for further examples and enlightenment on using this library.

Headers, Footers and Pages

header

The 'header' element generates the regular header required as the pre-amble for an HTML document. That is, everything from the initial <html> to the opening <body>. 

    [% INCLUDE html/header
         title = 'This is a Test'
	 bgcol = '#ffffff'
    %]

Additional header items can be provided by explicitly setting the 'headers' variable, e.g. 

    [% headers = BLOCK %]
    <META name="description" content="Template Toolkit">
    <META name="REVISIT-AFTER" content="14 days">	
    <META name="keywords" content="Templates, Web, ...etc...">
    [% END %]

    [% INCLUDE html/header
	 title = 'This is a Test'
	 bgcol = '#ffffff'
    %]
footer

The 'footer' element generates the terminating </body> and </html> element to balance the header. 

    [% PROCESS html/header %]

    ...page content here...

    [% PROCESS html/footer %]
page

The 'page' element combines the 'html/header' and 'html/footer' elements. 

    [% WRAPPER html/page %]

    ...page content here...

    [% END %]

Page content should be defined in the 'content' variable (e.g. via WRAPPER). Additional HTML headers should be defined in the 'headers' variable. 

    [% WRAPPER html/page
        headers = '<META name="keywords" content="foo, bar, ...">'
    %]

    ...page content here...

    [% END %]

Tables, Bars and Boxes

table

A basic element for creating HTML tables. 

    [% WRAPPER html/table pad=10 space=4 col='#404040' %]
       <tr>
	<td>Hello</td> <td>World</td>
       </tr>
    [% END %]

The following variables may be defined:

border
Set the border width (default: 0)
col
Set the background colour (default: none).
width
Set a fixed table width.
pad
Set the cellpadding.
space
Set the cellspacing.
content
Content for the box. Supplied automatically if used via WRAPPER.
row

A basic element for creating HTML table rows. 

    [% WRAPPER html/table %]
       [% WRAPPER html/row %]
	<td>Hello</td> <td>World</td>
       [% END %]
    [% END %]

The following variables may be defined:

col
Set the background colour (default: none).
valign
Set the vertical alignment.
rowspan
Specify the number of rows to span.
content
Content for the box. Supplied automatically if used via WRAPPER.
cell

A basic element for creating HTML table cells. 

    [% WRAPPER html/table %]
       [% WRAPPER html/row %]
	  [% INCLUDE html/cell 
		FOREACH content = ['Hello', 'World'] %]
       [% END %]
    [% END %]

The following variables may be defined:

col
Set the background colour (default: none).
align
Set the horizontal alignment.
colspan
Specify the number of columns to span.
content
Content for the cell. Supplied automatically if used via WRAPPER.
bar

The bar element is a wrapping of html/table + html/row. 

    [% WRAPPER html/bar %]
       <td>Foo</td>  <td>Bar</td>
    [% END %]
box

The box element is a wrapping of html/table + html/row + html/cell 

    [% WRAPPER html/box %]
       Hello World!
    [% END %]

AUTHOR

Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org>

http://wardley.org/

VERSION

2.68, distributed as part of the Template Toolkit version 2.19, released on 27 April 2007.

COPYRIGHT 

  Copyright (C) 1996-2007 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.

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

SEE ALSO

Template::Library::Splash