| HTML-FillInForm documentation | Contained in the HTML-FillInForm distribution. |
HTML::FillInForm - Populates HTML Forms with data.
This module fills in an HTML form with data from a Perl data structure, allowing you to keep the HTML and Perl separate.
Here are two common use cases:
1. A user submits an HTML form without filling out a required field. You want to redisplay the form with all the previous data in it, to make it easy for the user to see and correct the error.
2. You have just retrieved a record from a database and need to display it in an HTML form.
Fill HTML form with data.
$output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \$html, $q ); $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \@html, [$q1,$q2] ); $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \*HTML, \%data ); $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( 't.html', [\%data1,%data2] );
The HTML can be provided as a scalarref, arrayref, filehandle or file. The data can come from one or more hashrefs, or objects which support a param() method, like CGI.pm, Apache::Request, etc.
The basic syntax is seen above the Synopsis. There are a few additional options.
Suppose you have multiple forms in a html file and only want to fill in one.
$output = HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, $q, target => 'form1');
This will fill in only the form inside
<FORM name="form1"> ... </FORM>
Passwords are filled in by default. To disable:
fill_password => 0
To disable the filling of some fields:
ignore_fields => ['prev','next']
To disable fields from being edited:
disable_fields => [ 'uid', 'gid' ]
File upload fields cannot be supported directly. Workarounds include asking the user to re-attach any file uploads or fancy server-side storage and referencing. You are on your own.
Fields are cleared if you set their value to an empty string or empty arrayref but not undef:
# this will leave the form element foo untouched
HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, { foo => undef });
# this will set clear the form element foo
HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, { foo => "" });
It has been suggested to add a option to change the behavior so that undef values will clear the form elements. Patches welcome.
You probably need to read no further. The remaining docs concern the 1.x era syntax, which is still supported.
Call new() to create a new FillInForm object:
$fif = HTML::FillInForm->new; $fif->fill(...);
In theory, there is a slight performance benefit to calling new() before fill() if you make multiple
calls to fill() before you destroy the object. Benchmark before optimizing.
Instead of having your HTML and data types auto-detected, you can declare them explicitly in your
call to fill():
HTML source options:
arrayref => @html
scalarref => $html
file => \*HTML
file => 't.html'
Fill Data options:
fobject => $data_obj # with param() method
fdat => \%data
Additional methods are also available:
fill_file(\*HTML,...);
fill_file('t.html',...);
fill_arrayref(\@html,...);
fill_scalarref(\$html,...);
To use HTML::FillInForm in Apache::PageKit is easy. It is
automatically called for any page that includes a <form> tag.
It can be turned on or off by using the fill_in_form configuration
option.
HTML::FillInForm is now integrated with Apache::ASP. To activate, use
PerlSetVar FormFill 1
$Response->{FormFill} = 1
Using HTML::FillInForm from HTML::Mason is covered in the FAQ on the masonhq.com website at http://www.masonhq.com/?FAQ:HTTPAndHTML#h-how_can_i_populate_form_values_automatically_
This documentation describes HTML::FillInForm module version 2.00
Note that you might want to think about caching issues if you have password fields on your page. There is a discussion of this issue at
http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=70482
In summary, some browsers will cache the output of CGI scripts, and you
can control this by setting the Expires header. For example, use
-expires in CGI.pm or set browser_cache to no in
Config.xml file of Apache::PageKit.
Kato Atsushi has translated these docs into Japanese, available from
http://perldoc.jp
Please submit any bug reports to tjmather@maxmind.com.
Requires Perl 5.005 and HTML::Parser version 3.26.
I wrote this module because I wanted to be able to insert CGI data into HTML forms, but without combining the HTML and Perl code. CGI.pm and Embperl allow you so insert CGI data into forms, but require that you mix HTML with Perl.
There is a nice review of the module available here: http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=274534
(c) 2005 TJ Mather, tjmather@maxmind.com, http://www.maxmind.com/
All rights reserved. This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
HTML::Parser, Data::FormValidator (Data::FormValidato), HTML::Template, Apache::PageKit
Fixes, Bug Reports, Docs have been generously provided by:
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa Joseph Yanni Boris Zentner Philip Mak Dave Rolsky Jost Krieger Patrick Michael Kane Gabriel Burka Ade Olonoh Bill Moseley Tom Lancaster James Tolley Martin H Sluka Dan Kubb Mark Stosberg Alexander Hartmaier Jonathan Swartz Paul Miller Trevor Schellhorn Anthony Ettinger Jim Miner Simon P. Ditner Paul Lindner Michael Peters Maurice Aubrey Trevor Schellhorn Andrew Creer
Thanks!
| HTML-FillInForm documentation | Contained in the HTML-FillInForm distribution. |
package HTML::FillInForm; use integer; # no floating point math so far! use strict; # and no funny business, either. use Carp; # generate better errors with more context # required for attr_encoded use HTML::Parser 3.26; # required for UNIVERSAL->can require 5.005; use vars qw($VERSION @ISA); $VERSION = '2.00'; @ISA = qw(HTML::Parser); sub new { my ($class) = @_; my $self = bless {}, $class; $self->init; # tell HTML::Parser not to decode attributes $self->attr_encoded(1); return $self; } # a few shortcuts to fill() sub fill_file { my $self = shift; return $self->fill('file' ,@_); } sub fill_arrayref { my $self = shift; return $self->fill('arrayref' ,@_); } sub fill_scalarref { my $self = shift; return $self->fill('scalarref',@_); } # track the keys we support. Useful for file-name detection. sub _known_keys { return { scalarref => 1, arrayref => 1, fdat => 1, fobject => 1, file => 1, target => 1, fill_password => 1, ignore_fields => 1, disable_fields => 1, } } sub fill { my $self = shift; # If we are called as a class method, go ahead and call new(). $self = $self->new if (not ref $self); my %option; # If the first arg is a scalarref, translate that to scalarref => $first_arg if (ref $_[0] eq 'SCALAR') { $option{scalarref} = shift; } elsif (ref $_[0] eq 'ARRAY') { $option{arrayref} = shift; } elsif (ref $_[0] eq 'GLOB') { $option{file} = shift; } elsif (ref $_[0]) { croak "data source is not a reference type we understand"; } # Last chance, if the first arg isn't one of the known keys, we # assume it is a file name. elsif (not _known_keys()->{$_[0]} ) { $option{file} = shift; } else { # Should be a known key. Nothing to do. } # Now, check to see if the next arg is also a reference. my $data; if (ref $_[0]) { $data = shift; $data = [$data] unless ref $data eq 'ARRAY'; for my $source (@$data) { if (ref $source eq 'HASH') { push @{ $option{fdat} }, $source; } elsif (ref $source) { if ($source->can('param')) { push @{ $option{fobject} }, $source; } else { croak "data source $source does not supply a param method"; } } elsif (defined $source) { croak "data source $source is not a hash or object reference"; } } } # load in the rest of the options %option = (%option, @_); # As suggested in the docs, merge multiple fdats into one. if (ref $option{fdat} eq 'ARRAY') { my %merged; for my $hash (@{ $option{fdat} }) { for my $key (keys %$hash) { $merged{$key} = $hash->{$key}; } } $option{'fdat'} = \%merged; } my %ignore_fields; %ignore_fields = map { $_ => 1 } ( ref $option{'ignore_fields'} eq 'ARRAY' ) ? @{ $option{ignore_fields} } : $option{ignore_fields} if exists( $option{ignore_fields} ); $self->{ignore_fields} = \%ignore_fields; my %disable_fields; %disable_fields = map { $_ => 1 } ( ref $option{'disable_fields'} eq 'ARRAY' ) ? @{ $option{disable_fields} } : $option{disable_fields} if exists( $option{disable_fields} ); $self->{disable_fields} = \%disable_fields; if (my $fdat = $option{fdat}){ # Copy the structure to prevent side-effects. my %copy; keys %$fdat; # reset fdat if each or Dumper was called on fdat while(my($key, $val) = each %$fdat) { next if exists $ignore_fields{$key}; $copy{ $key } = ref $val eq 'ARRAY' ? [ @$val ] : $val; } $self->{fdat} = \%copy; } # We want the reference to these objects to go out of scope at the # end of the method. local $self->{objects} = []; if(my $objects = $option{fobject}){ unless(ref($objects) eq 'ARRAY'){ $objects = [ $objects ]; } for my $object (@$objects){ # make sure objects in 'param_object' parameter support param() defined($object->can('param')) or croak("HTML::FillInForm->fill called with fobject option, containing object of type " . ref($object) . " which lacks a param() method!"); } $self->{objects} = $objects; } if (my $target = $option{target}){ $self->{'target'} = $target; } if (defined($option{fill_password})){ $self->{fill_password} = $option{fill_password}; } else { $self->{fill_password} = 1; } # make sure method has data to fill in HTML form with! unless(exists $self->{fdat} || $self->{objects}){ croak("HTML::FillInForm->fillInForm() called without 'fobject' or 'fdat' parameter set"); } local $self->{object_param_cache}; if(my $file = $option{file}){ $self->parse_file($file); } elsif (my $scalarref = $option{scalarref}){ $self->parse($$scalarref); } elsif (my $arrayref = $option{arrayref}){ for (@$arrayref){ $self->parse($_); } } $self->eof; return delete $self->{output}; } # handles opening HTML tags such as <input ...> sub start { my ($self, $tagname, $attr, $attrseq, $origtext) = @_; # set the current form if ($tagname eq 'form') { $self->{object_param_cache} = {}; if (exists $attr->{'name'} || exists $attr->{'id'}) { $self->{'current_form'} = $attr->{'name'} || $attr->{'id'}; } else { # in case of previous one without </FORM> delete $self->{'current_form'}; } } # This form is not my target. if (exists $self->{'target'} && (! exists $self->{'current_form'} || $self->{'current_form'} ne $self->{'target'})) { $self->{'output'} .= $origtext; return; } # HTML::Parser converts tagname to lowercase, so we don't need /i if ($self->{option_no_value}) { $self->{output} .= '>'; delete $self->{option_no_value}; } # Check if we need to disable this field $attr->{disable} = 1 if exists $attr->{'name'} and exists $self->{disable_fields}{ $attr->{'name'} } and $self->{disable_fields}{ $attr->{'name'} } and not ( exists $attr->{disable} and $attr->{disable} ); if ($tagname eq 'input'){ my $value = exists $attr->{'name'} ? $self->_get_param($attr->{'name'}) : undef; # force hidden fields to have a value $value = '' if exists($attr->{'type'}) && $attr->{'type'} eq 'hidden' && ! exists $attr->{'value'} && ! defined $value; if (defined($value)){ $value = $self->escapeHTMLStringOrList($value); # check for input type, noting that default type is text if (!exists $attr->{'type'} || $attr->{'type'} =~ /^(text|textfield|hidden|)$/i){ if ( ref($value) eq 'ARRAY' ) { $value = shift @$value; $value = '' unless defined $value; } $attr->{'value'} = $value; } elsif (lc $attr->{'type'} eq 'password' && $self->{fill_password}) { if ( ref($value) eq 'ARRAY' ) { $value = shift @$value; $value = '' unless defined $value; } $attr->{'value'} = $value; } elsif (lc $attr->{'type'} eq 'radio'){ if ( ref($value) eq 'ARRAY' ) { $value = $value->[0]; $value = '' unless defined $value; } # value for radio boxes default to 'on', works with netscape $attr->{'value'} = 'on' unless exists $attr->{'value'}; if ($attr->{'value'} eq $value){ $attr->{'checked'} = 'checked'; } else { delete $attr->{'checked'}; } } elsif (lc $attr->{'type'} eq 'checkbox'){ # value for checkboxes default to 'on', works with netscape $attr->{'value'} = 'on' unless exists $attr->{'value'}; delete $attr->{'checked'}; # Everything is unchecked to start $value = [ $value ] unless ref($value) eq 'ARRAY'; foreach my $v ( @$value ) { if ( $attr->{'value'} eq $v ) { $attr->{'checked'} = 'checked'; } } # } else { # warn(qq(Input field of unknown type "$attr->{type}": $origtext)); } } $self->{output} .= "<$tagname"; while (my ($key, $value) = each %$attr) { next if $key eq '/'; $self->{output} .= sprintf qq( %s="%s"), $key, $value; } # extra space put here to work around Opera 6.01/6.02 bug $self->{output} .= ' /' if $attr->{'/'}; $self->{output} .= ">"; } elsif ($tagname eq 'option'){ my $value = $self->_get_param($self->{selectName}); $value = [ $value ] unless ( ref($value) eq 'ARRAY' ); if ( defined $value->[0] ){ $value = $self->escapeHTMLStringOrList($value); delete $attr->{selected} if exists $attr->{selected}; if(defined($attr->{'value'})){ # option tag has value attr - <OPTION VALUE="foo">bar</OPTION> if ($self->{selectMultiple}){ # check if the option tag belongs to a multiple option select foreach my $v ( grep { defined } @$value ) { if ( $attr->{'value'} eq $v ){ $attr->{selected} = 'selected'; } } } else { # if not every value of a fdat ARRAY belongs to a different select tag if (not $self->{selectSelected}){ if ( $attr->{'value'} eq $value->[0]){ shift @$value if ref($value) eq 'ARRAY'; $attr->{selected} = 'selected'; $self->{selectSelected} = 1; # remeber that an option tag is selected for this select tag } } } } else { # option tag has no value attr - <OPTION>bar</OPTION> # save for processing under text handler $self->{option_no_value} = $value; } } $self->{output} .= "<$tagname"; while (my ($key, $value) = each %$attr) { $self->{output} .= sprintf qq( %s="%s"), $key, $value; } unless ($self->{option_no_value}){ # we can close option tag here $self->{output} .= ">"; } } elsif ($tagname eq 'textarea'){ if ($attr->{'name'} and defined (my $value = $self->_get_param($attr->{'name'}))){ $value = $self->escapeHTMLStringOrList($value); $value = (shift @$value || '') if ref($value) eq 'ARRAY'; # <textarea> foobar </textarea> -> <textarea> $value </textarea> # we need to set outputText to 'no' so that 'foobar' won't be printed $self->{outputText} = 'no'; $self->{output} .= $origtext . $value; } else { $self->{output} .= $origtext; } } elsif ($tagname eq 'select'){ $self->{selectName} = $attr->{'name'}; if (defined $attr->{'multiple'}){ $self->{selectMultiple} = 1; # helper var to remember if the select tag has the multiple attr set or not } else { $self->{selectMultiple} = 0; $self->{selectSelected} = 0; # helper var to remember if an option was already selected in the current select tag } $self->{output} .= $origtext; } else { $self->{output} .= $origtext; } } sub _get_param { my ($self, $param) = @_; return undef if $self->{ignore_fields}{$param}; return $self->{fdat}{$param} if exists $self->{fdat}{$param}; return $self->{object_param_cache}{$param} if exists $self->{object_param_cache}{$param}; # traverse the list in reverse order for backwards compatibility # with the previous implementation. for my $o (reverse @{$self->{objects}}) { my @v = $o->param($param); next unless @v; return $self->{object_param_cache}{$param} = @v > 1 ? \@v : $v[0]; } return undef; } # handles non-html text sub text { my ($self, $origtext) = @_; # just output text, unless replaced value of <textarea> tag unless(exists $self->{outputText} && $self->{outputText} eq 'no'){ if(exists $self->{option_no_value}){ # dealing with option tag with no value - <OPTION>bar</OPTION> my $values = $self->{option_no_value}; my $value = $origtext; $value =~ s/^\s+//; $value =~ s/\s+$//; foreach my $v ( @$values ) { if ( $value eq $v ) { $self->{output} .= ' selected="selected"'; } } # close <OPTION> tag $self->{output} .= ">$origtext"; delete $self->{option_no_value}; } else { $self->{output} .= $origtext; } } } # handles closing HTML tags such as </textarea> sub end { my ($self, $tagname, $origtext) = @_; if ($self->{option_no_value}) { $self->{output} .= '>'; delete $self->{option_no_value}; } if($tagname eq 'select'){ delete $self->{selectName}; } elsif ($tagname eq 'textarea'){ delete $self->{outputText}; } elsif ($tagname eq 'form') { delete $self->{'current_form'}; } $self->{output} .= $origtext; } sub escapeHTMLStringOrList { my ($self, $toencode) = @_; if (ref($toencode) eq 'ARRAY') { foreach my $elem (@$toencode) { $elem = $self->escapeHTML($elem); } return $toencode; } else { return $self->escapeHTML($toencode); } } sub escapeHTML { my ($self, $toencode) = @_; return undef unless defined($toencode); $toencode =~ s/&/&/g; $toencode =~ s/\"/"/g; $toencode =~ s/>/>/g; $toencode =~ s/</</g; return $toencode; } sub comment { my ( $self, $text ) = @_; # if it begins with '[if ' and doesn't end with '<![endif]' # it's a "downlevel-revealed" conditional comment (stupid IE) # or # if it ends with '[endif]' then it's the end of a # "downlevel-revealed" conditional comment if( ( ( index($text, '[if ') == 0 ) && ( $text !~ /<!\[endif\]$/ ) ) || ( $text eq '[endif]' ) ) { $self->{output} .= '<!' . $text . '>'; } else { $self->{output} .= '<!--' . $text . '-->'; } } sub process { my ( $self, $token0, $text ) = @_; $self->{output} .= $text; } sub declaration { my ( $self, $text ) = @_; $self->{output} .= '<!' . $text . '>'; } 1; __END__