Not that either of the other systems are not excellent choices, but I prefer Template Toolkit. IMO it is very easy to get up and running and will work with *nix, Win32, Apache, and IIS. Take a look a the tutorial .

If it helps the install for Template Toolkit takes less than 5 minutes

FWIW my company has just completed a DB driven dynamic website with TT in about 50 lines of perl code.

grep

grep> cd /pub grep> more beer

Here is the code for what you are trying to do. I assume that you place a token like <TMPL_VAR NAME=TEXT> in the HTML template file:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $template = get_file ( 'c:/some/template.htm' );
my $textfile = get_file ( 'c:/some/textfile.txt' );
$template =~ s/<TMPL_VAR NAME=TEXT>/$textfile/ or die "No token!";
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print $template;

sub get_file {
    my $file = shift;
    open FILE, $file or die "Can't open $file $!\n";
    local $/;
    my $content = <FILE>;
  return $content;
}
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Now as it happens <TMPL_VAR NAME=TEXT> is what you use with HTML::Template. The corresponding code would be:

use HTML::Template;

# open the html template
my $template = HTML::Template->new(filename => 'some/template.html');

# get the text ( get_file() code above)
my $sometext = get_file( '/some/textfile.txt' );

# fill in some parameters
$template->param( TEXT => $sometext );

# send the obligatory Content-Type
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";

# print the template
print $template->output;
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If you *really* have a problem with module installation you can install them locally or as a last resort you can ditch the use HTML::Template; line in the code above and just paste the entire module at the end of your code.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

Thanks a lot everyone, this has been really helpful. Answered all my questions. Now I've got a new one =)

Tachyon mentioned installing modules locally - I tried that by copying the Template.pm file to my cgi-bin directory and telling it to use Template.pm, but it kept telling me it couldnt find it. Is there a special syntax for using local modules?

A Guide to Installing Modules

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

have you tried

   
 use ./Template.pm;
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Some modules also require that you actually install them, as opposed to just point at them, although I believe HTML::Template can simply be run this way.

---

Err.. nevermind what I said. Now that I look closely at your post I realize that you probably have shell access and can just install the module locally (see below). Which is what you SHOULD do. I tend to forget that since my website doesn't allow telnet or ssh.

Instead of   template =~ s/TEXTGOESHERE/$textfile/se try   $template =~ s/TEXTGOESHERE/$textfile/g; The /s modifier that you're using says to that a . in a regular expression should match a newline. Since you don't have a . in your regular expression, this is a no-op.

The /e modifier says to treat the replacement string as a Perl expression, and to use that value of that expression when making the replacement. This is almost certainly not what you intend.

By using /g instead, you're saying to replace every occurance of TEXTGOESHERE with the contents of $textfile. If you have only one TEXTGOESHERE, you'll only get one substitution.

Try it.

<tmpl_include name="somefile.txt">
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