README for the Perl Module CGI::FastTemplate - 1.01 Copyright (c) 1998 Jason Moore . All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the Artistic License for more details. DESCRIPTION ----------- CGI::FastTemplate manages templates and parses templates replacing variable names with values. It was designed for mid to large scale web applications (CGI, mod_perl) where there are great benefits to separating the logic of an application from the specific implementation details. For example using FastTemplate it is possible to: - build multilingual applications - allow users to select high-bandwidth or text-only versions of an application - let graphic designers work on templates independantly of the programmers - share the responsibility of interface design The design goals of CGI::FastTemplate were: Speed FastTemplate doesn't use eval, and parses with a single regular expression. It just does simple variable interpolation (i.e. there is no logic that you can add to templates - you keep the logic in the code). That's why it's has 'Fast' in it's name! Efficiency FastTemplate functions accept and return references whenever possible, which saves needless copying of arguments (hashes, scalars, etc). Flexibility The API is robust and flexible, and allows you to build very complex HTML documents/interfaces. It is also completely written in perl and works on Unix and NT. You could use it to build any type of ascii based document (e.g. postscript, xml, email) not just HTML. For more information see the pod documentation included in the file 'FastTemplate.pm'. INSTALLATION ------------ To install, unzip and untar the archive. In the directory created type: perl Makefile.PL make make install Note: If this does not work, you can always just copy the file 'FastTemplate.pm' to the 'CGI' directory in your perl distribution. If you want to test out the module without installing it, you can add the following to your code: BEGIN { unshift(@INC, "/wherever/you/put/CGI/FastTemplate.pm"); } use CGI::FastTemplate; DOCUMENTATION ------------- Documentation is included in the module in pod format. Once CGI::FastTemplate has been installed type: perldoc CGI::FastTemplate or if is uninstalled: perldoc ./FastTemplate.pm For more information on perldoc type 'perldoc perldoc'. AUTHOR ------ Jason Moore Feel free to send along any comments, suggestions, or bug reports. CHANGES ------- 1.00 Thu Aug 20 11:59:22 1998 - original version; created by h2xs 1.18 - first public release (rewrite) 1.01 Tue Sep 15 10:01:44 EDT 1998 - added clear(SCALAR) which clears the scalar from the parsed hash. i.e. $tpl->clear("FOO"); ## equivalent to: $tpl->assign(FOO=>""); - made $v='' not undef in parse() to avoid spurious warnings Thanks to: Benjamin Low - added method define_nofile() (alias: define_raw) which allows you to define a template without having to create a separate file for your template.