This section lists the standard plugins which can be used to extend the
runtime functionality of the Template Toolkit. The plugins are
distributed with the Template Toolkit but may required additional
modules from CPAN.
TEMPLATE TOOLKIT PLUGINS
The following plugin modules are distributed with the Template
Toolkit. Some of the plugins interface to external modules (detailed
below) which should be downloaded from any CPAN site and installed
before using the plugin.
Autoformat
The Autoformat plugin is an interface to Damian Conway's Text::Autoformat
Perl module which provides advanced text wrapping and formatting. See
Template::Plugin::Autoformat and Text::Autoformat for further
details.
[% USE autoformat(left=10, right=20) %]
[% autoformat(mytext) %] # call autoformat sub
[% mytext FILTER autoformat %] # or use autoformat filter
The Text::Autoformat module is available from CPAN:
The CGI plugin is a wrapper around Lincoln Stein's
<lstein@genome.wi.mit.edu> CGI.pm module. The plugin is
distributed with the Template Toolkit (see Template::Plugin::CGI)
and the CGI module itself is distributed with recent versions Perl,
or is available from CPAN.
Provides an interface to data stored in a plain text file in a simple
delimited format. The first line in the file specifies field names
which should be delimiter by any non-word character sequence.
Subsequent lines define data using the same delimiter as int he first
line. Blank lines and comments (lines starting '#') are ignored. See
Template::Plugin::Datafile for further details.
/tmp/mydata:
# define names for each field
id : email : name : tel
# here's the data
fred : fred@here.com : Fred Smith : 555-1234
bill : bill@here.com : Bill White : 555-5678
example:
[% USE userlist = datafile('/tmp/mydata') %]
[% FOREACH user = userlist %]
[% user.name %] ([% user.id %])
[% END %]
Date
The Date plugin provides an easy way to generate formatted time and date
strings by delegating to the POSIX strftime() routine. See
Template::Plugin::Date and POSIX for further details.
[% USE date %]
[% date.format %] # current time/date
File last modified: [% date.format(template.modtime) %]
Directory
The Directory plugin provides a simple interface to a directory and
the files within it. See Template::Plugin::Directory for further
details.
[% USE dir = Directory('/tmp') %]
[% FOREACH file = dir.files %]
# all the plain files in the directory
[% END %]
[% FOREACH file = dir.dirs %]
# all the sub-directories
[% END %]
DBI
The DBI plugin, developed by Simon Matthews
<sam@knowledgepool.com>, brings the full power of Tim Bunce's
<Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk> database interface module (DBI) to your
templates. See Template::Plugin::DBI and DBI for further details.
[% USE DBI('dbi:driver:database', 'user', 'pass') %]
[% FOREACH user = DBI.query( 'SELECT * FROM users' ) %]
[% user.id %] [% user.name %]
[% END %]
The DBI and relevant DBD modules are available from CPAN:
The Dumper plugin provides an interface to the Data::Dumper module. See
Template::Plugin::Dumper and Data::Dumper for futher details.
[% USE dumper(indent=0, pad="<br>") %]
[% dumper.dump(myvar, yourvar) %]
File
The File plugin provides a general abstraction for files and can be
used to fetch information about specific files within a filesystem.
See Template::Plugin::File for further details.
[% USE File('/tmp/foo.html') %]
[% File.name %] # foo.html
[% File.dir %] # /tmp
[% File.mtime %] # modification time
Filter
This module implements a base class plugin which can be subclassed
to easily create your own modules that define and install new filters.
package MyOrg::Template::Plugin::MyFilter;
use Template::Plugin::Filter;
use base qw( Template::Plugin::Filter );
sub filter {
my ($self, $text) = @_;
# ...mungify $text...
return $text;
}
# now load it...
[% USE MyFilter %]
# ...and use the returned object as a filter
[% FILTER $MyFilter %]
...
[% END %]
See Template::Plugin::Filter for further details.
Format
The Format plugin provides a simple way to format text according to a
printf()-like format. See Template::Plugin::Format for further
details.
[% USE bold = format('<b>%s</b>') %]
[% bold('Hello') %]
GD::Image, GD::Polygon, GD::Constants
These plugins provide access to the GD graphics library via Lincoln
D. Stein's GD.pm interface. These plugins allow PNG, JPEG and other
graphical formats to be generated.
[% FILTER null;
USE im = GD.Image(100,100);
# allocate some colors
black = im.colorAllocate(0, 0, 0);
red = im.colorAllocate(255,0, 0);
blue = im.colorAllocate(0, 0, 255);
# Draw a blue oval
im.arc(50,50,95,75,0,360,blue);
# And fill it with red
im.fill(50,50,red);
# Output image in PNG format
im.png | stdout(1);
END;
-%]
See Template::Plugin::GD::Image for further details.
GD::Text, GD::Text::Align, GD::Text::Wrap
These plugins provide access to Martien Verbruggen's GD::Text,
GD::Text::Align and GD::Text::Wrap modules. These plugins allow the
layout, alignment and wrapping of text when drawing text in GD images.
[% FILTER null;
USE gd = GD.Image(200,400);
USE gdc = GD.Constants;
black = gd.colorAllocate(0, 0, 0);
green = gd.colorAllocate(0, 255, 0);
txt = "This is some long text. " | repeat(10);
USE wrapbox = GD.Text.Wrap(gd,
line_space => 4,
color => green,
text => txt,
);
wrapbox.set_font(gdc.gdMediumBoldFont);
wrapbox.set(align => 'center', width => 160);
wrapbox.draw(20, 20);
gd.png | stdout(1);
END;
-%]
See Template::Plugin::GD::Text, Template::Plugin::GD::Text::Align
and Template::Plugin::GD::Text::Wrap for further details.
These plugins provide access to Martien Verbruggen's GD::Graph module
that allows graphs, plots and charts to be created. These plugins allow
graphs, plots and charts to be generated in PNG, JPEG and other
graphical formats.
[% FILTER null;
data = [
["1st","2nd","3rd","4th","5th","6th"],
[ 4, 2, 3, 4, 3, 3.5]
];
USE my_graph = GD.Graph.pie(250, 200);
my_graph.set(
title => 'A Pie Chart',
label => 'Label',
axislabelclr => 'black',
pie_height => 36,
transparent => 0,
);
my_graph.plot(data).png | stdout(1);
END;
-%]
See
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::lines,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::bars,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::points,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::linespoints,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::area,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::mixed,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::pie, and
GD::Graph,
for more details.
See
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::lines3d,
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::bars3d, and
Template::Plugin::GD::Graph::pie3d
for more details.
HTML
The HTML plugin is very new and very basic, implementing a few useful
methods for generating HTML. It is likely to be extended in the future
or integrated with a larger project to generate HTML elements in a generic
way (as discussed recently on the mod_perl mailing list).
[% USE HTML %]
[% HTML.escape("if (a < b && c > d) ..." %]
[% HTML.attributes(border => 1, cellpadding => 2) %]
[% HTML.element(table => { border => 1, cellpadding => 2 }) %]
See Template::Plugin::HTML for further details.
Iterator
The Iterator plugin provides a way to create a Template::Iterator
object to iterate over a data set. An iterator is created
automatically by the FOREACH directive and is aliased to the 'loop'
variable. This plugin allows an iterator to be explicitly created
with a given name, or the default plugin name, 'iterator'. See
Template::Plugin::Iterator for further details.
[% USE iterator(list, args) %]
[% FOREACH item = iterator %]
[% '<ul>' IF iterator.first %]
<li>[% item %]
[% '</ul>' IF iterator.last %]
[% END %]
Pod
This plugin provides an interface to the Pod::POM module
which parses POD documents into an internal object model which can
then be traversed and presented through the Template Toolkit.
The string "[% msg %]" is [% msg.length %] characters long.
Table
The Table plugin allows you to format a list of data items into a
virtual table by specifying a fixed number of rows or columns, with
an optional overlap. See Template::Plugin::Table for further
details.
The URL plugin provides a simple way of contructing URLs from a base
part and a variable set of parameters. See Template::Plugin::URL
for further details.
The Wrap plugin uses the Text::Wrap module by David Muir Sharnoff
<muir@idiom.com> (with help from Tim Pierce and many many others)
to provide simple paragraph formatting. See Template::Plugin::Wrap
and Text::Wrap for further details.
[% USE wrap %]
[% wrap(mytext, 40, '* ', ' ') %] # use wrap sub
[% mytext FILTER wrap(40) -%] # or wrap FILTER
The XML::DOM plugin gives access to the XML Document Object Module via
Clark Cooper <cooper@sch.ge.com> and Enno Derksen's
<enno@att.com> XML::DOM module. See Template::Plugin::XML::DOM
and XML::DOM for further details.
[% USE dom = XML.DOM %]
[% doc = dom.parse(filename) %]
The XML::RSS plugin is a simple interface to Jonathan Eisenzopf's
<eisen@pobox.com> XML::RSS module. A RSS (Rich Site Summary)
file is typically used to store short news 'headlines' describing
different links within a site. This plugin allows you to parse RSS
files and format the contents accordingly using templates.
See Template::Plugin::XML::RSS and XML::RSS for further details.
See Template::Plugin::XML::Style for further details.
XML::XPath
The XML::XPath plugin provides an interface to Matt Sergeant's
<matt@sergeant.org> XML::XPath module. See
Template::Plugin::XML::XPath and XML::XPath for further details.
[% USE xpath = XML.XPath(xmlfile) %]
[% FOREACH page = xpath.findnodes('/html/body/page') %]
[% page.getAttribute('title') %]
[% END %]
The plugin requires the XML::XPath module, available from CPAN: