XML::Template - Simple Text Templates using XML Tags

Copyright (c) 1999 Geoffrey R. Hutchison

You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public 
License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.
For use with Apache httpd and mod_perl, see also Apache copyright.

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED 
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF 
MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


OVERVIEW

I don't pretend that this is a unique idea. There are *many* Perl
template systems. What separates this one from the pack (AFAIK) is
that it supports more than just variable substituion. Using XML
markup, you can include other template files, perform simple variable
assignment, nested namespaces, and best of all, perform simple looping
constructs. For kicks, it also offers the CGI environment variables as
builtins, as well as the server's current date, time and date/time string.

In short the module offers what I see as the 80/20 rule. It doesn't
allow full Perl constructs (see something like ePerl or HTML::Embperl
for that) but implements the 20% of the features that make up 80% of
the needs for templates.

It also serves as an excellent pre-processor for either ePerl or
HTML::Embperl or the like. ;-)

BTW, The code is not limited to parsing XML documents. It works on any text
document, but is labeled as an XML template system because it uses XML
tags for the template markup. 


DOCUMENTATION

The Template.pm file contains the perldoc documentation. I won't
repeat it here since this may become outdated. Simply call perldoc on it:

perldoc Template.pm


EXAMPLES

The example/ directory contains some example template files. The .xmlt
files are used by the test script. The .html files are some examples
as to how the templates might be used in an HTML setting.

In addition the t/example.t script contains a sample of how to call the
parser. Here's the two-liner:

        my $interp = XML::Template->new("./examples");
        print $interp->compose(\%namespace, "example.xmlt");

Here "./examples" is the directory to use for reading templates (and
template includes). Then in the compose, \%namespace is a reference to
the hash to use for variable interpolation and example.xmlt is the
sample file.


FEEDBACK and BUG REPORTS

Obviously, please let me know if you find this module useful. Bug reports,
questions, feature suggestions, patches, etc. are quite
welcome. Opinions on performance issues would be greatly appreciated
since I haven't tested it too much in "live" situations.


THANKS

This code was inspired by the template system outlined in a Wired
WebMonkey article by Brian Slesinsky:  
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/code/97/21/index2a.html

However, this code differs not only in the eventual template language
outlined in the article, it is not based in anyway on the code
mentioned in the article (available under a more restrictive license).

Thanks are also necessary to eZiba.com, especially DeWitt Clinton
<dewitt@eziba.com> for their feedback and for letting me develop this
code on their dime.


AUTHOR

Geoff Hutchison <ghutchis@wso.williams.edu