Hello Monks,

I am currently discovering the bliss that is CGI::Application, though I have just bumped into a small issue.

Using CGI::Application::Plugin::TT, I built a nicely running start of my project. After I had 4 run modes, I wanted to make the navigation between them and future modes easier with the addition of a simple menu at the start of every page. Here are the related config and template files:

# The CGI::Application::Plugin::TT configuration
__PACKAGE__->tt_config(
    TEMPLATE_OPTIONS => {
        INCLUDE_PATH    => '/path/to/templates',
        WRAPPER         => 'wrapper.tmpl',
        PRE_CHOMP       => 2,
        POST_CHOMP      => 2,
    },
);

# wrapper.tmpl
[% WRAPPER html.tmpl + layout.tmpl;
    content;
END; %]

# layout.tmpl
<div id="container">

    <div id="menu">
    [% PROCESS main_menu.tmpl %]
    </div>

    <div id="main">
    [% content %]
    </div>

</div>

# html.tmpl is just a simple <html></html> wrapper, nothing relevant t
+o my issue

[download]

So, the heart of the problem is how I can fill the main_menu.tmpl template. At first, I thought about using constants, adding the definition of the menu to the TEMPLATE_OPTIONS hashref, but it didn't work.

__PACKAGE__->tt_config(
    TEMPLATE_OPTIONS => {
        # same as above, plus:
        CONSTANTS       => {
            menu    => [
                { text => 'Foo',
                  link => 'foo.html', },
                { text => 'Bar',
                  link => 'Bar.html', },
            ],
            foo     => 'foo!',
        },
    },
);

# main_menu.tmpl
<ul>
    <li>[% constants.foo %]</li>
[% FOREACH constants.menu %]
    <li><a href="[% link %]">[% text %]</a></li>
[% END %]
</ul>

[download]

This results in a list with only one item, 'foo!'. I didn't read anything in the Template Toolkit doc about user-defined constants needing to only be strings or numbers, but I guess it has to.

I then tried another way:

__PACKAGE__->tt_config(
    TEMPLATE_OPTIONS => {
        # same as the original one, plus:
        PRE_PROCESS     => 'config.tmpl',
    },
);

# config.tmpl, in case I have to define more site-wide parameters in t
+he future
[% PROCESS menu_def.tmpl %]

# menu_def.tmpl
[% site.menu = [
    { text => 'Foo',
      link => 'foo.html', },
    { text => 'Bar',
      link => 'Bar.html', },
    ];
%]

# main_menu.tmpl obviously becomes
<ul>
[% FOREACH site.menu %]
    <li><a href="[% link %]">[% text %]</a></li>
[% END %]
</ul>

[download]

That last one works as expected, however I wouldn't be posting here if I didn't have any question, so are there other, more standard ways of doing what I'm trying to achieve? Or anything I missed about the usage of user-defined constants in TT?

Thank you for your time and help.

In reply to CGI::Application, Template Toolkit and global parameters by Fang

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