kappa has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello, fellow monks. I seek for your collective wisdom :)

The task at hands is simple. I have a page which includes several nearly identical html chunks (read as follows: a form with several groups of widgets for date input). I'd like (naturally) to <TMPL_INCLUDE> them, but I don't seem to be able by design. Those widgets must have different names.

The way I'll probably do it now: 

my $tmpl = new HTML::Template
    filename => 'form.tmpl.html';
my $date = new HTML::Template
    filename => 'dateinput.tmpl.html';

$date->param(ctrl_name => 'start');
$tmpl->param(start_date => $date->output);
$date->param(ctrl_name => 'end');
$tmpl->param(end_date => $date->output);

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And I'd like to just: 
<TMPL_INCLUDE NAME='dateinput.tmpl.html' ctrl_name=start>
...
<TMPL_INCLUDE NAME='dateinput.tmpl.html' ctrl_name=end>

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Both ways are awkward and the second is also impossible with current HTML::Template.

Any suggestions?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: HTML::Template generic includes
by matija (Priest) on Mar 29, 2004 at 15:24 UTC
    The second method isn't impossible. You could define a filter subroutine (as a parameter to HTML::Template::new) that would handle the includes, and modify the content accordingly. (In fact, it could use HTML::Template do do it.)
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      Ahh, I see. With the ability to filter I can just implement a special tag for the case and let that <TMPL_INCLUDE> alone. Thanks for quite a good suggestion!
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Re: HTML::Template generic includes
by amw1 (Friar) on Mar 29, 2004 at 15:13 UTC
    I don't know how invested you are in HTML::Template, if you're pretty heavy into it than you can probabbly ignore the rest of this post. Fyi I think the only real way to do this with HTML::TEmplate is the first method you specified.
    Stuff like this is one of the main reasons I ended up switching from HTML::Template to Template::Toolkit. With template toolkit you can do something like 
    
[% # THis is in templatelib.tt %]
[% MACRO date_template(parm1, parm2, parm3) BLOCK %]
  [% SWITCH parm1 %]
    [% CASE "value 1" %]
      display this way
    [% CASE "value 2" %]
      display other way
    [% CASE DEFAULT %]
      display default way
  [% END %]
[% END %]

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    Your main template could look something like 
    [% # this is foo.tt %]
[% PROCESS templatelib.tt %]
[% date_template(parm_from_script, "foo", "bar") %]

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    your perl would look something like 
    my $template = Template->new();

my $t_vars = {
   parm_from_script => "value 1",
   other_stuff => "mmmm donuts",
};

$template->process("foo.tt", $t_vars) ||
   die $template->error();

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    Granted, there is now "code" inside the html, but it's still all display logic. It's not the processing logic. I tend to make the line between perl/templates in that perl will handle anything that's not strictly for display while the templates will handle everything else. People disagree with this and they're right too. :P
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