HTML::HiLiter - highlight words in an HTML document just like a felt-tip HiLiter


HTML-HiLiter documentation Contained in the HTML-HiLiter distribution.

Index


Code Index:

NAME

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HTML::HiLiter - highlight words in an HTML document just like a felt-tip HiLiter

SYNOPSIS

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 use HTML::HiLiter;

 my $hiliter = new HTML::HiLiter(
  word_characters   =>  '\w\-\.',
  ignore_first_char =>  '\-\.',
  ignore_last_char  =>  '\-\.',
  tag               =>	'span',
  colors            =>	[ qw(#FFFF33 yellow pink) ],
  tag_filter        =>	\&yourtagcode(),
  text_filter       =>	\&yourtextcode(),
  query             =>  'foo bar or "some phrase"',
 );

 $hiliter->run($some_file_or_URL);

DESCRIPTION

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HTML::HiLiter is designed to make highlighting search queries in HTML easy and accurate. HTML::HiLiter was designed for CrayDoc 4, the Cray documentation server.

As of verison 0.14, HTML::HiLiter has been completely re-written with a new API, using Search::Tools.

REQUIREMENTS

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The following are required:

Perl version 5.8.3 or later (for proper UTF-8 support).

Search::Tools 0.25 or later.

HTML::Parser

Required to use the HTTP option in the run() method:

HTTP::Request

LWP::UserAgent

FEATURES

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A cornucopia of features.

METHODS

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new()

Create a HiLiter object.

Any parameter that can be passed to Search::Tools::HiLiter can be passed to HTML::HiLiter. In addition, the following HTML::HiLiter-specific parameters are supported:

fh

The filehandle to send output to. Defaults to STDOUT. If print_stream is false, will buffer instead of printing.

hiliter

Set a Search::Tools::HiLiter object for HTML::HiLiter to use. If you do not set one, one will be created based on the other parameters you pass.

tag_filter

A CODE reference of your choosing for filtering HTML tags as they pass through the HTML::Parser. See FILTERS.

text_filter

A CODE reference of your choosing for filtering HTML text as it passes through the HTML::Parser. See FILTERS.

buffer_limit

When the number of characters in the HTML buffer exceeds the value of buffer_limit, the buffer is printed without highlighting being attempted. The default is 2**16 characters. Make this higher at your peril. Most HTML will not exceed more than that n a <p> tagset, for example.

Default value true (1). Print highlighted HTML as the HTML::Parser encounters it. If true, use a select() in your script to print somewhere besides the perl default of STDOUT.

NOTE: Set this to 0 (false) only if you are highlighting small chunks of HTML (i.e., smaller than buffer_limit). See run().

init

Called internally by new().

query

Get the Search::Tools::Query object created in new().

style_header( html )

If set, html will be applied just after the opening <head> tag while parsing. This is to allow insertion of CSS or other head-appropriate markup.

apply_hiliting( string )

Passes string through Search::Tools::HiLiter->light() and returns string highlighted.

Queries

This method is deprecated. See the query param to new() instead.

run( $file | $url | \$html )

run() takes either a file name, a URL (indicated by a leading 'http://'), or a scalar reference to a string of HTML text.

Run

For backwards compatability, Run() is an alias for run().

FILTERS

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text_filter and tag_filter are two optional parameters that allow you to filter the contents of your HTML beyond normal highlighting. Each parameter takes a CODE reference.

text_filter should expect these parameters in this order:

parserobj, dtext, text, offset, length

tag_filter should expect these parameters in this order:

parserobj, tag, tagname, offset, length, offset_end, attr, text

Both should return a scalar string of text. tag_filter should return a set of attributes. text_filter may return whatever you want. See EXAMPLES and the HTML::Parser documentation for what these parameters mean and for more about writing filters.

EXAMPLES

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See examples/ directory in source distribution.

HISTORY

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Yet another highlighting module?

My goal was complete, exhaustive, tear-your-hair-out efforts to highlight HTML. No other modules I found on the web supported nested tags within words and phrases, or character entities. Cray uses the standard DocBook stylesheets from Norm Walsh et al, to generate HTML. These stylesheets produce valid HTML but often fool the other highlighters I found.

The problem became most evident when we started using Swish-e. Swish-e does such a good job at converting entities and doing phrase matching that we found ourselves in a dilemma: Swish-e often gave valid search results that mere mortal highlighters could not match in the source HTML -- not even the SWISH::*Highlight modules.

With the exception of the 'nohiliter' attribute, I think I follow the W3C HTML 4.01 specification. Please prove me wrong.

Prime Example of where this module overcomes other attempts by other modules.

The query 'bold in the middle' should match this HTML:

   <p>some phrase <b>with <i>b</i>old</b> in&nbsp;the middle</p>

GOOD highlighting:

   <p>some phrase <b>with <i><span>b</span></i><span>old</span></b><span>
   in&nbsp;the middle</span></p>

BAD highlighting:

   <p>some phrase <b>with <span><i>b</i>bold</b> in&nbsp;the middle</span></p>




No module I tried in my tests could even find that as a match (let alone perform bad highlighting on it), even though indexing programs like Swish-e would consider a document with that HTML a valid match.

Should you use this module?

I would suggest not using HTML::HiLiter if your HTML is fairly simple, since in HTML::HiLiter, speed has been sacrificed for accuracy and rich features. Check out HTML::Highlight instead.

Unlike other highlighting code I've found, HTML::HiLiter supports nested tags and character entities, such as might be found in technical documentation or HTML generated from some other source (like DocBook SGML or XML).

The goal is server-side highlighting that looks as if you used a felt-tip marker on the HTML page. You shouldn't need to know what the underlying tags and entities and encodings are: you just want to easily highlight some text as your browser presents it.

TODO

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KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

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Will not highlight literal parentheses ().

Phrases that contain stopwords may not highlight correctly. It's more a problem of *which* stopword the original doc used and is not an intrinsic problem with the HiLiter, but noted here for completeness' sake.

AUTHOR

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Peter Karman, karman@cray.com

Thanks to the Swish-e developers, in particular Bill Moseley for graciously sharing time, advice and code examples.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

COPYRIGHT

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SUPPORT

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Send email to swpubs@cray.com.

SEE ALSO

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Search::Tools, HTML::Parser


HTML-HiLiter documentation Contained in the HTML-HiLiter distribution.

package HTML::HiLiter;
use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.008003;    # Search::Tools requires this
use base qw( Search::Tools::Object );
use Carp;
use Search::Tools::QueryParser;
use Search::Tools::HiLiter;
use Search::Tools::UTF8;
use Data::Dump qw( dump );
use File::Slurp;
use HTML::Parser;
use HTML::Tagset;

# HTML::Tagset::isHeadElement doesn't define these,
# so we add them here
$HTML::Tagset::isHeadElement{'head'}++;
$HTML::Tagset::isHeadElement{'html'}++;

__PACKAGE__->mk_accessors(
    qw( hiliter query buffer_limit print_stream fh style_header ));

our $VERSION = '0.16';

# some global debugging vars
my $open_comment  = "\n<!--\n";
my $close_comment = "\n-->\n";

################################################################################
# char tables below are from pre 0.14. keeping here for reference, just in case.
#
#
# a subset of chars per SWISH
#$ISO_ext
#    = 'ªµºÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþÿ';

######################################################################################
# http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/latin1.html
# The CP1252 characters that are not part of ANSI/ISO 8859-1, and that should therefore
# always be encoded as Unicode characters greater than 255, are the following:

# Windows   Unicode    Char.
#  char.   HTML code   test         Description of Character
#  -----     -----     ---          ------------------------
#ALT-0130   &#8218;   â    Single Low-9 Quotation Mark
#ALT-0131   &#402;    Ä    Latin Small Letter F With Hook
#ALT-0132   &#8222;   ã    Double Low-9 Quotation Mark
#ALT-0133   &#8230;   É    Horizontal Ellipsis
#ALT-0134   &#8224;        Dagger
#ALT-0135   &#8225;   à    Double Dagger
#ALT-0136   &#710;    ö    Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent
#ALT-0137   &#8240;   ä    Per Mille Sign
#ALT-0138   &#352;    ?    Latin Capital Letter S With Caron
#ALT-0139   &#8249;   Ü    Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
#ALT-0140   &#338;    Î    Latin Capital Ligature OE
#ALT-0145   &#8216;   Ô    Left Single Quotation Mark
#ALT-0146   &#8217;   Õ    Right Single Quotation Mark
#ALT-0147   &#8220;   Ò    Left Double Quotation Mark
#ALT-0148   &#8221;   Ó    Right Double Quotation Mark
#ALT-0149   &#8226;   ¥    Bullet
#ALT-0150   &#8211;   Ð    En Dash
#ALT-0151   &#8212;   Ñ    Em Dash
#ALT-0152   &#732;    ÷    Small Tilde
#ALT-0153   &#8482;   ª    Trade Mark Sign
#ALT-0154   &#353;    ?    Latin Small Letter S With Caron
#ALT-0155   &#8250;   Ý    Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark
#ALT-0156   &#339;    Ï    Latin Small Ligature OE
#ALT-0159   &#376;    Ù    Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis
#
#######################################################################################

# NOTE that all the Char tests will likely fail above unless your terminal/editor
# supports Unicode

# browsers should support these numbers, and in order for perl < 5.8 to work correctly,
# we add the most common if missing

#%unicodes = (
#    8218 => "'",
#    402  => 'f',
#    8222 => '"',
#    8230 => '...',
#    8224 => 't',
#    8225 => 't',
#    8216 => "'",
#    8217 => "'",
#    8220 => '"',
#    8221 => '"',
#    8226 => '*',
#    8211 => '-',
#    8212 => '-',
#    732  => '~',
#    8482 => '(TM)',
#    376  => 'Y',
#    352  => 'S',
#    353  => 's',
#    8250 => '>',
#    8249 => '<',
#    710  => '^',
#    338  => 'OE',
#    339  => 'oe',
#);
#
#for ( keys %unicodes ) {
#
#    # quotemeta required since build_regexp will look for the \
#    my $ascii = quotemeta( $unicodes{$_} );
#    next if length $ascii > 2;
#
#    #warn "pushing $_ into $ascii\n";
#    push( @{ $codeunis{$ascii} }, $_ );
#}

################################################################################

my %Defaults = (
    tag          => 'span',
    class        => undef,
    print_stream => 1,
    buffer_limit => 2**16,
    fh           => *STDOUT,
);

sub init {
    my $self    = shift;
    my %args    = $self->_normalize_args(@_);
    my %non_api = map { $_ => $args{$_} } grep { !$self->can($_) } keys %args;
    delete $args{$_} for keys %non_api;

    # special case for stemmer
    if ( exists $non_api{stemmer} ) {
        $args{stemmer} = delete $non_api{stemmer};
    }
    $self->SUPER::init(%args);
    $self->{$_} = $non_api{$_} for keys %non_api;

    # SWISH deprecated
    if ( exists $self->{SWISHE} or exists $self->{SWISH} ) {
        croak
            "SWISHE/SWISH feature is no longer supported. See SWISH::HiLiter.";
    }

    $self->_setup_back_compat();
    $self->_setup();

    return $self;
}

sub _setup_back_compat {
    my $self = shift;

    if ( defined( $self->{Print} ) && $self->{Print} == 0 ) {
        $self->{print_stream} = 0;
    }
    if ( exists $self->{TagFilter} ) {
        $self->{tag_filter} = delete $self->{TagFilter};
    }
    if ( exists $self->{TextFilter} ) {
        $self->{text_filter} = delete $self->{TextFilter};
    }
    if ( exists $self->{HiTag} ) {
        $self->{tag} = delete $self->{HiTag};
    }
    if ( exists $self->{HiClass} ) {
        $self->{class} = delete $self->{HiClass};
    }
    if ( exists $self->{Colors} ) {
        $self->{colors} = delete $self->{Colors};
    }
    if ( exists $self->{Links} ) {
        $self->{hilite_links} = delete $self->{Links};
    }

    if ( exists $self->{noplain} ) {
        carp
            "'noplain' is deprecated, and is always performed automatically.";
    }

}

sub _setup {
    my $self = shift;

    for my $param ( keys %Defaults ) {
        if ( !exists $self->{$param} ) {
            $self->{$param} = $Defaults{$param};
        }
    }

    if ( exists $self->{parser} && $self->{parser} == 0 ) {
        croak
            "use Search::Tools::HiLiter directly instead of HTML::HiLiter without a parser";
    }

    $self->{hiliter} ||= Search::Tools::HiLiter->new(
        tag        => $self->{tag},
        class      => $self->{class},
        colors     => $self->{colors},
        style      => $self->{style},
        text_color => $self->{text_color},
        query      => $self->{query},
        tty        => $self->{tty},
        debug      => $self->{debug},
    );

    $self->{_terms_regex} = $self->{query}->terms_as_regex;
}

sub _handle_tag {
    my ($self,   $parser,     $tag,  $tagname, $offset,
        $length, $offset_end, $attr, $text
    ) = @_;

    my $is_end_tag = $tag =~ m/^\//;

    # $tag has ! for declarations and / for endtags
    # $tagname is just bare tagname

    if ( $self->{debug} >= 3 ) {
        print { $self->{fh} } $open_comment;
        print { $self->{fh} } "\n" . '=' x 20 . "\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Tag          :$tag:\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "TagName      :$tagname:\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Offset       :$offset\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Length       :$length\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Offset_end   :$offset_end\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Text         :$text\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Attr         :" . dump($attr) . "\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "skipping_tag :$self->{_skipping_tag}:\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "is_end_tag   :$is_end_tag\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } $close_comment;
    }

    # turn HiLiting ON if we are not inside the <head> tagset.
    # this prevents us from hiliting a <title> for example.
    if ( !$self->{_is_hiliting} ) {
        if ( !exists $HTML::Tagset::isHeadElement{$tagname} ) {
            $self->{debug} and carp "turning is_hiliting on for <$tag>";
            $self->{_is_hiliting} = 1;
        }
        else {

            $self->_meta_charset_check( $tag, $attr, \$text );

            # still in <head> section. handle and continue.
            if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
                print { $self->{fh} } $text;
            }
            else {
                $self->{output_buffer} .= $text;
            }
            return;
        }
    }

    if ($is_end_tag) {
        $self->_handle_end_tag( $parser, $tag, $tagname, $offset, $length,
            $offset_end, $attr, $text );
    }
    else {
        $self->_handle_start_tag( $parser, $tag, $tagname, $offset, $length,
            $offset_end, $attr, $text );
    }
}

sub _meta_charset_check {
    my ( $self, $tag, $attr, $text ) = @_;

    # if this is a meta tag, check for encoding. we want to make sure
    # we do not declare anything other than utf-8 or ascii in the output,
    # since Search::Tools::HiLiter always returns utf-8.
    if ( lc($tag) eq 'meta' ) {
        if ( exists $attr->{'http-equiv'} or exists $attr->{'HTTP-EQUIV'} ) {
            if ( exists $attr->{content} or exists $attr->{CONTENT} ) {
                my $name    = $attr->{'http-equiv'} || $attr->{'HTTP-EQUIV'};
                my $content = $attr->{content}      || $attr->{CONTENT};
                if (   lc($name) eq 'content-type'
                    && lc($content) !~ m/ascii|utf-8/i )
                {
                    $$text
                        = qq(<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

sub _handle_end_tag {
    my ($self,   $parser,     $tag,  $tagname, $offset,
        $length, $offset_end, $attr, $text
    ) = @_;

    if ( $self->{_skipping_tag} eq $tagname ) {

        # should be endtag
        $self->{_skipping_tag} = '';
    }

    $self->{_buffer} .= $text;

    if ( !$HTML::Tagset::isPhraseMarkup{$tagname} or lc($tag) eq '/head' ) {
        $self->_flush_buffer();
    }

}

sub _matches_any_term {
    my $self = shift;
    my $buf  = shift;

    $self->debug and carp "check '$buf' against $self->{_terms_regex}";
    
    return $buf =~ m/$self->{_terms_regex}/;
}

sub _flush_buffer {
    my ($self) = @_;

    if ( !length $self->{_buffer} ) {
        return;
    }

    # if we have a buffer limit defined and the current $buffer
    # length exceeds that limit, deal with it immediately
    # and don't highlight
    if ((   $self->{buffer_limit}
            && length( $self->{_buffer} ) > $self->{buffer_limit}
        )
        || ( !$self->{_is_hiliting} )
        )
    {
        if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
            print { $self->{fh} } $self->{_buffer};
        }
        else {
            $self->{output_buffer} .= $self->{_buffer};
        }
    }
    else {

        # otherwise, call the hiliter on $buffer
        # this is the main event

        $self->{debug} and carp "flushing buffer";

        my $hilited;

        if ( $self->_matches_any_term( $self->{_decoded_buffer} ) ) {
            $hilited = $self->apply_hiliting( $self->{_buffer} );
        }
        else {
            $hilited = $self->{_buffer};
        }

        # remove any markers we inserted to skip hiliting.
        # doing it in 2 expressions instead of |'d together single expre
        # is much faster, nytprof tells me.
        $hilited =~ s/\002//g;
        $hilited =~ s/\003//g;

        if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
            print { $self->{fh} } $hilited;
        }
        else {
            $self->{output_buffer} .= $hilited;
        }

    }

    $self->{_buffer} = '';
}

sub _handle_start_tag {
    my ($self,   $parser,     $tag,  $tagname, $offset,
        $length, $offset_end, $attr, $text
    ) = @_;

    if ( $attr->{nohiliter} ) {

        # we want to not highlight this tag's contents

        $self->{_skipping_tag} = $tagname;

        #warn "skipping <$tag> with nohiliter\n";

    }

    # if we encounter an inline tag, add it to the buffer
    # for later evaluation
    # PhraseMarkup is closest to libxml2 'inline' definition
    if ( $HTML::Tagset::isPhraseMarkup{$tagname} ) {

        my $tag_filter = $self->{tag_filter};
        my $reassemble
            = defined $tag_filter
            ? $tag_filter->(
            $parser, $tag, $tagname, $offset, $length, $offset_end, $attr,
            $text
            )
            : $text;

        warn "$open_comment adding :$reassemble: to buffer $close_comment"
            if $self->{debug} >= 3;

        # add to the buffer for later evaluation as a potential match
        $self->{_buffer} .= $reassemble;

        #warn "INLINEBUFFER:$buffer:INLINEBUFFER";

        return;

    }

    # flush the buffer before handling this tag.
    $self->_flush_buffer();

    # now handle this tag
    $self->_reset_state();

    # use reassemble to futz with attribute values or tagnames
    # before printing them.
    # otherwise, default to what we have in original HTML
    #
    # NOTE: this is where we could change HREF values, for example

    my $tag_filter = $self->{tag_filter};
    my $reassemble
        = defined $tag_filter
        ? $tag_filter->(
        $parser, $tag, $tagname, $offset, $length, $offset_end, $attr, $text
        )
        : $text;

    if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
        print { $self->{fh} } $reassemble;
    }
    else {
        $self->{_buffer} .= $reassemble;
    }

    # if this is the opening <head> tag,
    # add the <style> declarations for the hiliting
    # this lets later <link css> tags in a doc
    # override our local <style>

    if ( lc($tag) eq 'head' ) {
        if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
            print { $self->{fh} } $self->{style_header}
                if $self->{style_header};
        }
        else {
            $self->{_buffer} .= $self->{style_header}
                if $self->{style_header};
        }
    }

}

sub _handle_text {
    my ( $self, $parser, $decoded_text, $text, $offset, $length ) = @_;
    my $text_filter = $self->{text_filter};
    my $filtered
        = defined $text_filter
        ? $text_filter->( $parser, $decoded_text, $text, $offset, $length )
        : $text;

    if ( !$self->{_is_hiliting} ) {

        # still in <head> section. handle and continue.
        if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
            print { $self->{fh} } $filtered;
        }
        else {
            $self->{output_buffer} .= $filtered;
        }
        return;
    }

    # remember decoded to eval before calling hilite()
    # this replaces the addtional 'tagless' algorithm
    # that hilite() was doing
    $self->{_decoded_buffer} .= $decoded_text;

    if ( $self->{_skipping_tag} ) {

      # we don't want to highlight this text but we do want to output it later
      # so delimit the text with the NULL character and skip that fragment
      # in hilite()

        $self->{_buffer} .= "\002" . $filtered . "\003";
    }
    else {
        $self->{_buffer} .= $filtered;
    }

    if ( $self->{debug} >= 3 ) {
        print { $self->{fh} } $open_comment
            . "text         :$text:\n"
            . "filtered     :$filtered:\n";
        print { $self->{fh} } "Added text to buffer\n"
            if $self->{_is_hiliting};
        print { $self->{fh} } "decoded      :$decoded_text:\n"
            . "Offset       :$offset\n"
            . "Length       :$length\n"
            . $close_comment;
    }

}

sub _check_count {
    my $self = shift;

    # return total count for all keys
    my $done;
    for ( sort keys %{ $_[0] } ) {
        $done += $_[0]->{$_};
        if ( $self->{debug} >= 1 and $_[0]->{$_} > 0 ) {
            print { $self->{fh} }
                "$open_comment $_[0]->{$_} remaining to hilite for: $_ $close_comment";
        }
    }
    return $done;
}

sub Queries {
    croak "Queries() is deprecated. Set the 'query' param in new()";
}

sub _reset_state {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{_buffer}         = '';
    $self->{_skipping_tag}   = '';
    $self->{_decoded_buffer} = '';
    return $self;
}

sub _reset_output_buffer {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{output_buffer} = '';
    return $self;
}

sub _handle_default {
    my ( $self, $parser, $text ) = @_;
    if ( $self->{print_stream} ) {
        print { $self->{fh} } $text;
    }
    else {
        $self->{_buffer} .= $text;
    }
}

*Run = \&run;

sub run {
    my $self   = shift;
    my $string = shift;
    if ( !defined $string ) {
        croak "file or string required";
    }
    $self->{_is_hiliting} = 0;
    $self->_reset_output_buffer;
    $self->_reset_state;

    my $parser = HTML::Parser->new(
        unbroken_text => 1,
        api_version   => 3,
        text_h        => [
            sub { $self->_handle_text(@_) },
            'self,dtext,text,offset,length'
        ],
        start_h => [
            sub { $self->_handle_tag(@_) },
            'self,tag,tagname,offset,length,offset_end,attr,text'
        ],
        end_h => [
            sub { $self->_handle_tag(@_) },
            'self,tag,tagname,offset,length,offset_end,undef,text'
        ],
        default_h => [ sub { $self->_handle_default(@_) }, 'self,text' ]
    );

    my $return;
    if ( !ref($string) && -e $string ) {
        $return = $parser->parse( to_utf8( scalar read_file($string) ) );
    }
    elsif ( $string =~ m/^https?:\/\//i ) {
        $return = $parser->parse( to_utf8( $self->_get_url($string) ) );
    }
    elsif ( ref $string eq 'SCALAR' ) {
        $return = $parser->parse( to_utf8($$string) );
    }
    else {
        croak
            "$string is neither a file nor a filehandle nor a scalar ref!\n";
    }

    if ( !$return ) {
        $self->{error} = $!;    # TODO correct error msg?
    }
    if ( !$self->{print_stream} ) {
        $self->{output_buffer} .= "\n";
    }
    else {
        print { $self->{fh} }
            "\n";               # does parser intentionlly chomp last line?
    }

    # reset parser -- TODO need this since it goes out of scope here?
    $parser->eof;

    return $self->{output_buffer} || $return;
}

sub apply_hiliting {
    my $self = shift;
    my $str  = shift;
    if ( !defined $str ) {
        croak "string required";
    }
    return $self->{hiliter}->light($str);
}

sub _get_url {

    require HTTP::Request;
    require LWP::UserAgent;

    my $self = shift;
    my $url = shift || return;

    my ( $http_ua, $request, $response, $content_type, $buf, $size );

    $http_ua  = LWP::UserAgent->new;
    $request  = HTTP::Request->new( GET => $url );
    $response = $http_ua->request($request);
    $content_type ||= '';
    if ( $response->is_error ) {
        warn "Error: Couldn't get '$url': response code "
            . $response->code . "\n";
        return;
    }

    if ( $response->headers_as_string =~ m/^Content-Type:\s*(.+)$/im ) {
        $content_type = $1;
        $content_type =~ s/^(.*?);.*$/$1/;  # ignore possible charset value???
    }

    $buf  = $response->content;
    $size = length($buf);

    $url = $response->base;
    return ( $buf, $url, $response->last_modified, $size, $content_type );

}

1;

__END__