I often find it helpful to think about the template first and then see what the data structure that fills it would have to look like. This is how I'd write a template for the output you want: 
<ul>
<TMPL_LOOP states>
  <li> <TMPL_VAR state>
  <ul>
   <TMPL_LOOP people> <li> <TMPL_VAR person> </TMPL_LOOP>
  </ul>
</TMPL_LOOP>
</ul>

[download]
Now that we know where the loops and vars go, we can figure out what kind of data structure we need. TMPL_LOOPs need something like loop_name => [ { .. }, { .. }, .. ]. (A reference to an array of hash references). TMPL_VARs just need var_name => "scalar". So in order to fill out this template, you'll need data that is structured like this: 
my @states = (
       {
         state => "Alaska",
         people => [ { person => "Joe Blow" },
                     { person => "Peter TorkM" } ]
       },
       {
         state => "California",
         people => [ { person => "Lily White },
                     { person => "Erik Svendater" } ]
       },
       ...
);

$tmpl->param( states => \@states );

[download]
If you have your data already in some other form, and have questions about how to get it into a data structure like this, let us know and we can probably help with that too..

blokhead

In reply to Re: HTML::Template Loop Question by blokhead
in thread HTML::Template Loop Question by theAcolyte

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