Hi, I am looking for comments on an idea, and/or suggestions on how to improve it/replace it with something else. I have some pretty complex stand alone sql, plus some stored procedures, which I execute via perl+DBI. My concerns are regarding how to best handle the output. Most of the time, HTML+CSS reports/email will be produced, but some people will also need the output as comma delimited. My about-to-be-implemented idea consists of the following. Write a module, say SQLData, with subroutines for each query, which will take a parameter to output .csv or ready to be displayed html. i.e. 
package @SQLData
...
sub css {
   if needed, define css here, else link to it.
   this will be mostly used for html emails, given
   that linking to it will be a pain if it goes outside
   the company
}
sub foo {
   my $bar = shift(@_);
   my @output;
   my $sql = ("sql code here")
   my @array $sql->execute;
   while (@array = $sql->fetchrow_array) {
     if ($bar=='csv') {
        push(@output,"$foo[0],$foo[1]"}
     } else {
        push(@output,"<tr><td>$foo[0]</td><td>$foo[1]</td></tr>");
     }
   }
   $sql->finish();
   return @output;
}

[download]
What do you think? Is this the best way to approach it? Is it even a good way? Thanks.

2005-08-17 Retitled by Arunbear, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'How does this look?'

In reply to Exporting data from database as HTML or CSV by Anonymous Monk

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