Re: why use OO nature in CGI?

why would someone go through the extra TROUBLE in using the OO aspect of CGI instead of just hard coding the HTML manually using heredocs?

You mean HTML tag generation by functions/methods, instead of by embedded literal HTML? Oh, some reasons:

Proper tag nesting is enforced by the nature of scripts
Easing automatic generation of some HTML, like the choices in dropdown boxes, and automatic escaping of entered values
Sticky values, i.e. when generating similar HTML again from the form input, values get automatically filled in with the old values. This eases error processing: the programmer doesn't need to do anything extra, while the user gets the old values he typed in last time back, so he doesn't have to start all over from scratch.

To me, the latter point would be its major selling point, thought enforcement of proper tag nesting is a good second.

Comment on Re: why use OO nature in CGI?

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Re^2: why use OO nature in CGI? by siracusa (Friar) on May 22, 2005 at 13:56 UTC
You mean HTML tag generation by functions/methods, instead of by embedded literal HTML? There's actually a third option that I prefer for HTML forms in particular: mutable widget objects that serialize to HTML (or XHTML) on request. The memory overhead of this approach is slightly higher than HTML-generator functions, but this is far outweighed by the increased flexibility and, most importantly, potential for reuse. Fields with input and output filters, auto-inflate/deflate of values, compound fields (single "logical" fields made up of multiple "physical" HTML fields), etc., all make dealing with large, complex forms so much easier, IME.	[reply]

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Re^2: why use OO nature in CGI?
by siracusa (Friar) on May 22, 2005 at 13:56 UTC

You mean HTML tag generation by functions/methods, instead of by embedded literal HTML?