README for the Perl Module CGI::FastTemplate - 1.09

        Copyright (c) 1998-1999 Jason Moore <jmoore@sober.com>.  All rights
        reserved.

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

        This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
        but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
        MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
        Artistic License for more details.

DESCRIPTION

CGI::FastTemplate manages templates and parses templates replacing variable names with values. It was designed for mid to large scale web applications (CGI, mod_perl) where there are great benefits to separating the logic of an application from the specific implementation details.

For example using FastTemplate it is possible to:

• build multilingual applications
• allow users to select high-bandwidth or text-only versions of an application
• let graphic designers work on templates independantly of the programmers
• share the responsibility of interface design

CGI::FastTemplate has the following attributes:

Speed

       FastTemplate doesn't use eval, and parses with a single
       regular expression.  It just does simple variable
       interpolation (i.e. there is no logic that you can add to
       templates - you keep the logic in the code).  That's why
       it's has 'Fast' in it's name!

       Efficiency

       FastTemplate functions accept and return references
       whenever possible, which saves needless copying of
       arguments (hashes, scalars, etc).

       Flexibility

       The API is robust and flexible, and allows you to build
       very complex HTML documents or HTML interfaces.  It is
       100% perl and works on Unix or NT.  Also, it isn't
       restricted to building HTML documents -- it could be used
       to build any ascii based document (e.g. postscript, XML,
       email).

For more information see the pod documentation included in the file 'FastTemplate.pm'.

INSTALLATION

To install, unzip and untar the archive. In the directory created type:

        perl Makefile.PL
        make
        make install

Note: If this does not work, you can always just copy the file 'FastTemplate.pm' to the 'CGI' directory in your perl distribution.

If you want to test out the module without installing it, you can add the following to your code:

        BEGIN
        {
                unshift(@INC, "/wherever/you/put/CGI-FastTemplate/");
        }

        use CGI::FastTemplate;

DOCUMENTATION

Documentation is included in the module in pod format. Once CGI::FastTemplate has been installed type:

perldoc CGI::FastTemplate

or if is uninstalled:

perldoc ./FastTemplate.pm

For more information on perldoc type 'perldoc perldoc'.

AUTHOR

Jason Moore <jmoore@sober.com>

Feel free to send along any comments, suggestions, or bug reports.

CHANGES

Revision history for Perl extension CGI::FastTemplate.

1.09 Sun Jun 27 23:40:14 EDT 1999

• object is now uses array ref, not a hash ref to store attributes Thanks to: Greg Bacon from his talk "Building Objects out of Arrays" at YAPC note: the API is the same -- this is a behind-the-scenes implementation change.
  • minor pod doco edits
  • added test scripts and 2 test templates

1.08 Sun Jan 24 23:14:03 EST 1999

• minor pod doco edits
• added GNU copyright
• 'Changes' file no longer in distribution. See: 'README'

1.07 Sun Jan 24 23:14:03 EST 1999

• edited main regexp to add support for new ${VAR} style variables. Thanks to: Eric L. Brine <q2ir@unb.ca>
• minor pod doco edits

1.06 Mon Jan 4 13:47:13 EST 1999

• extended clear_tpl() to allow for a selective clearing of loaded templates. Useful for persistant or long running code where you want to use a large template, but don't want to keep it in memory.

        clear_tpl()         - clears all loaded templates from cache
        clear_tpl(SCALAR)   - clears only template SCALAR
        clear_tpl(ARRAY)    - clears templates named in ARRAY

1.05 Fri Nov 27 15:27:54 EST 1998

• extended clear_parse() (alias: clear()) to handle array as well as a scalar. e.g. $tpl->clear("ROWS") or $tpl->clear("ROWS", "COLS", "HEAD"); are valid.

1.04 Thu Oct 29 09:57:15 EST 1998

• strict() now leaves unknown variables in the final doc instead of converting them to an empty string. see: no_strict() to get the old behavior back.

1.03 Thu Oct 15 10:42:14 EDT 1998

• minor change to prevent spurious warnings under -w (e.g. {strict} becomes {"strict"})

1.02 Tue Sep 22 08:57:29 EDT 1998

• fixed bug that allowed first character after '$' to be a digit. Variables are now: $[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]+ Thanks to: Benjamin Low <b.d.low@unsw.edu.au>
• add strict() no_strict() which turns on/off complaints to STDERR when a variable is found but no value found for it.

1.01 Tue Sep 15 10:01:44 EDT 1998

• added clear(SCALAR) which clears the scalar from the parsed hash. i.e.

  $tpl->clear("FOO"); ## equivalent to: $tpl->assign(FOO=>"");

• made $v='' not undef in parse() to avoid spurious warnings Thanks to: Benjamin Low <b.d.low@unsw.edu.au>
• added method define_nofile() (alias: define_raw) which allows you to define a template without having to create a separate file for your template.

1.00 Thu Aug 20 11:59:22 1998

• original version; created by h2xs 1.18
• first public release (rewrite)