Template::Plugin::Datafile(3pm)
NAME
Template::Plugin::Datafile - Plugin to construct records from a simple
data file
SYNOPSIS
[% USE mydata = datafile('/path/to/datafile') %]
[% USE mydata = datafile('/path/to/datafile', delim = '|') %]
[% FOREACH record = mydata %]
[% record.this %] [% record.that %]
[% END %]
DESCRIPTION
- This plugin provides a simple facility to construct a list of hash
references, each of which represents a data record of known structure, from a data file. - [% USE datafile(filename) %]
- A absolute filename must be specified (for this initial implementation
at least - in a future version it might also use the "INCLUDE_PATH").
An optional "delim" parameter may also be provided to specify an
alternate delimiter character.
[% USE userlist = datafile('/path/to/file/users') %]
[% USE things = datafile('items', delim = '|') %]- The format of the file is intentionally simple. The first line defines
the field names, delimited by colons with optional surrounding
whitespace. Subsequent lines then defines records containing data
items, also delimited by colons. e.g.
id : name : email : tel
abw : Andy Wardley : abw@tt2.org : 555-1234
sam : Simon Matthews : sam@tt2.org : 555-9876- Each line is read, split into composite fields, and then used to
initialise a hash array containing the field names as relevant keys.
The plugin returns a blessed list reference containing the hash
references in the order as defined in the file.
[% FOREACH user = userlist %][% user.id %]: [% user.name %]- [% END %]
- The first line of the file must contain the field definitions. After
the first line, blank lines will be ignored, along with comment line
which start with a '"#"'.
BUGS
Should handle file names relative to "INCLUDE_PATH". Doesn't permit
use of '":"' in a field. Some escaping mechanism is required.
AUTHOR
Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org> <http://wardley.org/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1996-2007 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
- Template::Plugin