--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)

Perhaps you're right. That was a bad example. One way CGI.pm shows its usefulness which seems to been obscured here is with deeply nested constructs (table within a table within a form, etc.).

By replacing the BEGIN/END (tag) paradigm with a nested function call paradigm, CGI all but eliminates the kind of unbalanced tag nuisances one frequently encounters when generating HTML dynamically.

IMHO, I find looking at naked HTML (in a HEREDOC or otherwise) annoying for its waste of space (I suppose XML rubs me much the same way) and its near-redundancy; I dislike typing it even more.

I suppose the advantage is better illustrated with this comparison:

<FORM METHOD='POST>
  <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="mode" VALUE="confirm">
  <TABLE BORDER=0>
    <TR>
      <TD>
        <TABLE WIDTH='100%'>
          <TR>
            <TH>ColA</TH>
            <TH>ColB</TH>
            <TH>ColC</TH>
          </TR>
          <TR>
            <TD>Value A</TD>
            <TD>Value B</TD>
            <TD>Value C</TD>
          </TR>
          <TR>
            <TD><INPUT TYPE="submit"></TD>
            <TD><INPUT TYPE="reset"</TD>
            <TD>&nbsp;</TD>
          </TR>
        </TABLE>
      </TD>
    </TR>
  </TABLE>
</FORM>
[download]

Compared with:

form( { -method => 'POST' },
       hidden( -name => 'mode', -value => 'confirm' ),
       table( { -border => 0 },
               Tr( td( table( { -width => '100%' },
                              Tr( th( [ 'ColA','ColB','ColC' ] ),
                                  td( [ 'Value A','Value B','Value C' 
+] )
                                  td( [ submit, reset, ' ' ] ))
                            )))
            )
    )
[download]

Oh, you want to write all that to the browser?

print form( { -method => 'POST' },
       hidden( -name => 'mode', -value => 'confirm' ),
       table( { -border => 0 },
               Tr( td( table( { -width => '100%' },
                              Tr( th( [ 'ColA','ColB','ColC' ] ),
                                  td( [ 'Value A','Value B','Value C' 
+] )
                                  td( [ submit, reset, ' ' ] ))
                            )))
            )
    )
[download]

dmm

For any complex website I would strongly disagree with the advice to use CGI's html generation methods. The more complex the overall site, the more I tend to disagree. A recent node with a good summary of why templating is a good idea was given by maverick at Re: Re: Re: Re: Code Critique. (There are plenty of others out there of course.)

"For any complex website I would strongly disagree with the advice to use CGI's html generation methods."

Depending upon the level of complexity, I would tend to agree with your assessment, although for my own work, I tend to mix and match. For instance, I might template the site look-and-feel components (top or left navbar, etc.) especially if I need a lot of Javascript to glue it all together, but for low- to medium-complexity screens, I sometimes choose to use CGI.pm exclusively for generating the HTML.

I find that for highly dynamic screens, CGI.pm is easier to work with than, say Dreamweaver and the like. It rarely takes more than a couple of iterations to tweak it into shape.

My .02.

dmm

You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day ...
Or, you can teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime