NAME HTML::EP - a system for embedding Perl into HTML SYNOPSIS CGI-Env This is an HTML document. You see. Perhaps you wonder about the unknown HTML tags like ep-comment above? They are part of the EP system. For example, this comment section will be removed and you won't see it in your browser. # This is an example of embedding Perl into the page. # We create a variable called time, containing the current # time. This variable will be used below. my $self = $_; $self->{'time'} = localtime(time()); ''; # Return an empty string; result becomes embedded into the # HTML page

The current time

Your HTML::EP system is up and running: The current time is $time$. WARNING THIS IS ALPHA SOFTWARE. It is *only* 'Alpha' because the interface (API) is not finalised. The Alpha status does not reflect code quality or stability. DESCRIPTION Have you ever written a CGI binary? Easy thing, isn't it? Was just fun! Have you written two CGI binaries? Even easier, but not so much fun. How about the third, fourth or fifth tool? Sometimes you notice that you are always doing the same: Reading and parsing variables Formatting output, in particular building tables Sending mail out from the page Building a database connection, passing CGI input to the database and vice versa Talking to HTML designers about realizing their wishes You see, it's soon to become a pain. Of course there are little helpers around, for example the CGI module, the mod_perl suite and lots of it more. Using them make live a lot easier, but not so much as you like. the CGI(3) manpage. the mod_perl(3) manpage. On the other hand, there are tools like PHP/FI or WebHTML. Incredibly easy to use, but not as powerfull as Perl. Why not get the best from both worlds? This is what EP wants to give you, similar to ePerl or HTML::EmbPerl. I personally believe that EP is simpler and better extendible than the latter two. the ePerl(1) manpage. the HTML::EmbPerl(3) manpage. In short, it's a single, but extensible program, that scans an HTML document for certain special HTML tags. These tags are replaced by appropriate output generated by the EP. What remains is passed to the browser. Its just like writing HTML for an enhanced browser! Prerequisites As far as I know EP depends on no system dependent features. However, it relies on some other Perl modules: CGI The CGI module should be a part of your Perl core's installation. If not, you should definitely upgrade to Perl 5.004. :-) My thanks to Lincoln D. Stein . Note, you need a late version, including the CGI::Cookie module. HTML::Parser This module is used for parsing the HTML templates. My thanks to Gisle Aas . libwww The LWP library contains a lot of utility functions, for example HTML and URL encoding and decoding. Again, my thanks to Gisle Aas . :-) Mail::Internet Graham Barr wrote the MailTools package. Some parts of it, in particular the Mail::Internet module is used for sending mail from within the HTML page. Thank very much, Graham! Storable Raphael Manfredi's excellent Storable module is used for storing sessions. I owe him much, as Storable is usefull in a lot of other modules. URI You already know the name Gisle Aas , don't you? :-) URI is yet another of its packages, we need the URI::Escape module. Perl itself and the above modules are available from any CPAN mirror, for example ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module Note that you don't need to install these manually, the CPAN module will help you. See the the section on "Automatic Installation" below. Automatic Installation Installing this module (and the prerequisites from above) is quite simple, if you have the CPAN module available and network access, you might try an automatic installation: perl -MCPAN -e shell If the CPAN prompt appears, asking you for commands, enter install Bundle::HTML::EP Manual Installation If automatic installation doesn't work, you just fetch the archive, extract it with gzip -cd HTML-EP-0.1125.tar.gz | tar xf - (this is for Unix users, Windows users would prefer WinZip or something similar) and then enter the following: cd HTML-EP-0.1125 perl Makefile.PL make make test If any tests fail, let me know. Otherwise go on with make install This will put the required Perl modules into a destination where Perl finds it by default. Additionally it will install a single CGI binary, called `ep.cgi'. The docs are available online with perldoc HTML::EP If you prefer an HTML version of the docs, try pod2html lib/HTML/EP.pm in the source directory. Using the CGI binary You have different options for integrating EP into your WWW server, depending on which server you are using and the permissions you have. The simplest possibility is running an external CGI binary. Another option is to use mod_perl with Apache, see the section on "Using mod_perl" below. I suggest that you choose an extension and configure your WWW server for feeding files with this extension into `ep.cgi'. For example, with Apache, you can add the following lines to your `srm.conf': ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ep.cgi /usr/bin/ep.cgi AddHandler x-ep-script .ep Action x-ep-script /cgi-bin/ep.cgi This tells Apache that files with extension ep.cgi are handled by the CGI binary `/usr/bin/ep.cgi'. Make sure, that the ScriptAlias line is entered *before* any other ScriptAlias instruction! From now on your server will never return files with extension .ep directly! Verify your installation by creating the following file: Local time The current time is: scalar(localtime(time)) (Note that this is a much shorter version of the example in the synopsis.) Store it as `/test.ep' on your web server and retrieve the file via your Web server. If you see the time displayed, it are up and running. Using mod_perl The EP package can be integrated into mod_perl, for example by using the following commands in `srm.conf': PerlModule Apache::EP SetHandler perl-script PerlHandler Apache::EP->handler Options ExecCGI Keep in mind, that mod_perl differs in many details from programming CGI binaries. In particular you might need to restart Apache for loading changes in modules. Available methods All EP tags are starting with the prefix *ep-*. Some available tags are: ep-comment This is a multi-line tag for embedding comments into your HTML page. But why use this tag, instead of the usual HTML comment, ` This is another comment, but you won't see it in your browser. The HTML editor will show it to you, however! Do not try to embed EP instructions into the comment section! They won't produce output, but they might be executed anyways. ep-perl This is for embedding Perl into your script. There are two versions of it: A multiline version is for embedding the Perl code immediately into your script. Example: The Date

The Date

Hello, today its the

# This little piece of Perl code will be executed # while scanning the page. # # Let's calculate the date! # my($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year) = localtime(time); # Leave a string with the date as result. Will be # inserted into the HTML stream: sprintf("%02d.%02d.%04d", $mday, $mon+1, $year+1900);

If you don't like to embed Perl code, you may store it into a different file. That's what the single-line version of ep-perl is for: The Date

The Date

Hello, today its the

You have noticed, that the little script's result was inserted into the HTML page, did you? It did return a date, in other words a string consisting of letters, digits and dots. There's no problem with inserting such a string into an HTML stream. But that's not always the case! Say you have a string like Use for terminating the HTML page. This cannot be inserted as a raw string, for obvious reasons. Thus the ep-perl command has an attribute *output*. Use it like this: 'Use for terminating the HTML page.'; Possible values of the *output* attribute are `raw' (default), `html' (HTML encoded) and `url' (URL encoded). It's a common mistake, to use the Perl command `return' in embedded Perl. Never do that! If you need return (there are of course situations where returning can help), do it like this: sub eval_me { if ($this) { return 'foo'; } elsif ($that) { return 'bar'; } ''; } eval_me(); See the section on "Variables" below for interactions between Perl variables and EP variables. For security reasons, you might set an attribute *safe*, as in ... This will create a Safe compartment for you and run the embedded script in the compartment. Using this attribute is highly recommended! ep-mail This command will send an e-mail. The attributes will be used for creating the email header, in particular the `subject', `from' and `to' attribute should be used. Example: Hello, Bill, old chap. How are you? Yours sincerely, Jochen You can still use EP variables in the E-mail body, for example the following works: Hello, Joe, this e-mail was sent to you by $@cgi->name$. But note that we suppress conversion into HTML format in the mail body! See the section on "Variables" below for details. Recent sendmail versions are quite picky about validity of email addresses. Thus it is highly recommended that you use valid addresses for the *to* and *from* fields. If you want to customize the sender, you'd better choose a fixed *from* field and modify the *reply-to* field only, as in the example above. ep-errhandler This command advices EP, what to do in case of errors. See the section on "Error handling" below. Example: Set the template being used for system errors. Likewise, set the template for user errors. If an error occurs, the given scripts are loaded and used as templates instead of the current one. You don't need external files! Instead you can use User error

User error

Replace user and continue. :-)

To be serious, the following problem happened:

$errmsg$

Please return to the calling page, fix the problem and retry.

 However, you might prefer to use a single error template and of course it's faster to use external error templates than parsing builtin templates. (At least, if no error occurs. :-) ep-error This command forces an error message. See the section on "Error handling" below. You can trigger user or system errors by setting the *type* attribute to the values `system' (default) or `user'. The *msg* attribute is for setting the error message. Example: If no email address was entered, force a user error. Email address is ok. ep-database This command connects to a database. Its attributes are `dsn', `user' and `password' corresponding to the same attributes of the DBI connect method. See the DBI(3) manpage for details on DBI. Example: You can use different database connections by using the *dbh* attribute: The *dbh* attribute advices EP to store the DBI handle in the given variable. (Default: `dbh') See the section on "Variables" below. ep-query This command executes an SQL statement. The `query' attribute will be used for passing the SQL statement. Of course a multiline version is available, thus is the same as INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 'bar') If your query retrieves a result, use the `result' attribute to store it in a variable, for example like this: This will create a variable `employees', an array ref of hash refs. You can use the ep-list command for displaying the output. See the section on "Variables" below. When using multiple database connections, use the *dbh* attribute for choosing the connection. (See the *ep-database* method above.) If you have big result tables, you might prefer DBI's *fetchrow_arrayref* method over creating hash refs, because arrays are created faster than hash refs. This is achieved by setting the attribute *resulttype* to array. The default is hash. Other resulttypes are *single_hash* and *single_array*: If your query will return at most a single element, then the result variable will contain the first row (or an undefined value) and not an array. Sometimes you don't want to retrieve the complete result table. In that case you can use the attributes *startat* and *limit*. For example, to retrieve rows 0-19, use startat=0 and *limit=20*. Likewise you would use startat=20 and limit=20 for rows 20-39. When using the *MySQL* engine, the *startat* and *limit* attributes are directly mapped to MySQL's *LIMIT* clause. ep-list This command is used to display an array of refs. Lets assume, that the variable `employees' contains a an array ref of refs with the attributes *name* and *department*. Then you could create a table of employees as follows:
Nr.NameDepartment
$i$$e->name$$e->department$
This will be processed as follows: For any item in the array, retrieved from the variable `employees', create a variable `e' and display the text between ep-list and /ep-list for it by replacing the patterns $e->name$ and $e->department$ with the corresponding values. The variable *i* is initially set to 0 and incremented by one with any element. You must not create a variable for the *items* attribute: When using a *range* attribute instead of *items* then a variable list will be created for you. The *range* attribute can be either `start..stop' in which case a list of the numbers start..stop will be created. Otherwise the attribute must be a comma separated list of values. See the *ep-select* command below for an example of the *range* attribute. ep-select This is similar to ep-list, but it is specifically designed for creating SELECT boxes and similar things. We explain it by example: If you supply a *selected* attribute, then a variable *selected* will be created for any item. The value will be either an empty string or the word `SELECTED' (configurable via the attribute *selected-text*), depending on whether the item matches the *selected* value or not. ep-input This is usefull for reading an objects data out of CGI variables. Say you have a form with input fields describing an address, the field names being address_t_name, address_t_street, address_n_zip and address_t_city. By using the command the EP program will create a variable "address" for you which is an hash ref as follows: $cgi = $_->{cgi}; $_->{address} = { name => { col => 'name', val => $cgi->param("address_name"), type => 't', }, street => { col => 'street', val => $cgi->param("address_street"), type => 't', }, zip => { col => 'zip', val => $cgi->param("address_zip"), type => 'n', }, city => { col => 'city', val => $cgi->param("address_city"), type => 't' } }; In general column names beginning with *address* will be splitted into `prefix_type_suffix', the type being one of t Text columns (CHAR, VARCHAR, BINARY, or whatever), that will be quoted using the $self->{'dbh'}->quote() method. n Numeric columns (INTEGER, REAL, ...) that will be left untouched dd dm dy Day, month and year of a date. The combined fields will be quoted as 'yyyy-mm-dd'. s Set columns as created using MultiSelect boxes; the selected values will be used for creating a comma separated string. The idea is generating SQL queries automatically out of the `address' variable. This task is supported by the *sqlquery* attribute: Create a new record, if no ID is given The *sqlquery* creates attributes *names*, *values* and *update* for you, that may be used in INSERT or UPDATE queries. Note that the *ep-input* must be preceeded by an *ep-database* call, because it is using DBI's *quote* method. the DBI(3) manpage. There are situations where you want to fetch not only a single object, but a list of objects. Suggest an order form of articles. Then you might have input fields *art_0_t_name*, *art_0_n_count*, *art_0_n_price*, *art_1_t_name*, ... In that case you can give the *ep-input* command an attribute list, like this: The module will read an array ref of objects to the variable `dest'. Any object will have an additional scalar variable `i' referring to the items number, beginning with 0. In other words, you can process the order form as follows: my $self = $_; my $sum = 0.0; for (my $i = 0; defined($self->{cgi}->param("art_$i_n_count")); $i++) { $sum += $self->{cgi}->param("art_$i_n_count") * $self->{cgi}->param("art_$i_n_price") } '' The following items have been ordered: Nr. Price Article $art->count->val$ $art->price->val$ $art->name->val$ Total sum: $sum$ ep-input-sql-query This method is internally called by ep-input and implements the creation of the *names*, *values* and *updates* attributes. It takes as input the hash ref given by the variable *dest*, usually created by ep-input. The hash ref consists of column names as keys and hash refs with the attributes *type* and *val*. The main reason for putting this into a separate method is subclassing: It is quite usual, that you want ep-input to read the data, then do some verification and/or modification on the data (for example, canonicalizing dates) and finally create the SQL query. This can be done quite easily by subclassing the *_ep_input_sql_query* method: Within the method you verify and/or modify data entered by the user and then call the super class. For example, a typical subclass implementation could look like this: sub _ep_input_sql_query { my $self = shift; my $attr = shift; # If the user left the MYCOL column empty, set it to NULL. my $dest = $attr->{'dest'}; $self->{$dest}->{'MYCOL'} = undef if $self->{$dest}->{'MYCOL'} eq ''; $self->SUPER::_ep_input_sql_query($attr); } ep-include Sometimes you want to source external files. This can be done by using If a file with the given name doesn't exist, the file name is treated as being relative to your WWW servers *DOCUMENT_ROOT* directory. ep-exit This directive terminates processing of the current HTML page. Conditional HTML It is possible to blank out parts of the HTML document. See the following example: Conditional HTML

Conditional HTML

You have entered a negative number for i! You have entered zero for i! You have entered a negative number for j! You have entered zero for j! Ok, both numbers are positive. The example is of course somewhat unnatural, because you'd better use a single ep-perl in that case, but it shows that we can use arbitrary complex structures of conditional HTML. The *eval* attribute is simply treated as a truth value, as in Perl. Thus empty strings or numeric zeros are FALSE, everything else is TRUE. This is reversed, if you replace *eval* with *neval*: a is not set a is set If you'd like to compare numeric values, use the *cnd* attribute, as in a is lower than b a is greater than or equal to b You may choose either of ==, !=, <, >, <= or >= for the condition. And finally you may compare string values like this: a is equal to b Note the use of the single quotes, which is really required here. Available conditions are eq and ne. Localization Localization is available via the HTML::EP::Locale module. Currently it only offers methods for localizing strings. To access the module, let's assume you prefer your visitors reading the german (de) version of your page, but it is also available in english (en). Then start your HTML page with When the package is loaded, it tries to guess your documents language. The default language is *de* (german) or whatever you choose when installing the package. Another language can be specified by * By setting the CGI variable *language*, for example by making a link to mypage.ep?language=en. * By setting the environment variable *HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE*; most browsers do this for you. For example with Netscape, this variable is configurable via Edit/Preferences/Navigator/Languages. Two possibilities are available for localizing strings. For short strings like titles, headers or Link refs you might prefer this version: Obviously this is not appropriate for longer strings and it must not contain HTML patterns. Thus another version is available:

Dies ist ein Absatz.

Dies ist der zweite Absatz.

This is one paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

 Note you need not use a /ep-language for terminating the german part, similar to the ep-if, ep-elseif, ..., ep-else, /ep-if structure. A special problem with localization is the choice of a character set. You can fix a certain character set with something like Error handling Error handling with EP is quite simple: All you do in case of errors is throwing a Perl exception. For example, DBI handles are created with the RaiseError attribute set to 1, so that SQL errors trigger a Perl exception. You never care for errors! However, what happens in case of errors? In that case, EP will use the template that you have set with ep-errhandler and treat it like an ordinary EP document, by setting the variables `errmsg' and `admin'. If you don't set an error handler, the following template will be used, which is well suited for creating an own error template: Internal error

Internal error

An internal error occurred. The server has not been able to fullfill your request. The error message is:

            $errmsg$

Please contact the Webmaster, $admin$, tell him the URL, the time and error message.

We apologize for any inconvenience, please try again later!




Yours sincerely,

The Webmaster

Variables It is important to understand, how EP variables work, in particular when working with ep-perl. You always have an object $_, which is an instance of the HTML::EP class (a subclass of HTML::Parser). This object has certain attributes, in particular `$_->{cgi}', a CGI object and `$_->{dbh}', the DBI handle. (Of course valid after `ep-database' only.) If you want to set or modify a variable, you have to set `$_->{varname}'. If you want to retrieve the value, use the same. Note that you cannot use `$_' for a long time, as it will be changed by Perl loops and the like, thus your Perl code typically starts with $_ = $self; But how do you access the variable from within EP documents? You just write $varname$ This will be replaced automatically by the parser with the value of `$_- >{varname}'. Even more, the value will be converted into HTML source! If `varname' is a structured variable, for example a hash or array ref, you may as well use $varname->attrname$ or $varname->0$ to access `$_->{varname}->{attrname}' or `$_->{varname}->[0]', respectively. A special value of *varname* is `cgi': This will access the CGI variable of the same name, thus the following are equivalent: $cgi->email$ and $_->{cgi}->param('email'); But what, if you don't want your variable to be HTML encoded? You may as well use $@varname$ (Raw) $#varname$ (URL encoded) $~varname$ (SQL encoded) The latter uses the $_->{dbh}->quote() method. In particular this implies that you have to be connected to a database, before using this tag! You can even use these symbols in attributes of EP commands. For example, the following will be usefull when sending a mail: Attributes may include EP variables, just like ordinary HTML code. Even more, they may contain Perl code which is evaluated just like code between `' and `'. However, you need to use the variable `$_' in the code, because the package otherwise doesn't detect what you want it to do. See the section on "Custom variable formatting" for setting up your own formats. Of course you can set EP variables from within an ep-perl section. But sometimes it is desirable to set them from within HTML. In such cases you can do something like Now, if you do a Variable a has the value $a$. the value b will be emitted. It is also possible to set multiline variables: This is a template, extending a single line. Custom variable formatting Sometimes the builtin formatting methods of HTML::EP are not sufficient. A good example are currencies. These can be handled with format methods. For example, see the following method for german currency values: package MyPackage; sub _format_DM { my($self, $val) = @_; sprintf("%.2f DM", $val); $val =~ s/\./,/; $val; }; '' This can be used as follows, suggest we have the following variables: a = 1 b = 2.4 c = 34.47 then we can use a = $&DM->a$ => 1,00 DM b = $&DM->b$ => 2,40 DM c = $&DM->c$ => 34,47 DM In other words: Use the special marker &, followed by the custom formats method name, the dereferencing operator and finally the variable name. The above method is already predefined by the HTML::EP::Locale module. As you have seen, the pattern $&METHODNAME->var$ triggers the call of $self->_format_METHODNAME($self->{'var'}); It is not always usefull to fix a method name. In such cases you may instead store a code ref in $self->{'_ep_custom_formats'}->{'METHODNAME'}; For example the above could as well be $_->{'_ep_custom_formats'}->{'DM'} = sub { my($self, $val) = @_; sprintf("%.2f DM", $val); $val =~ s/\./,/; $val; }; '' Modifying the CGI headers The attribute $self->{'_ep_heaaders'} is containing arguments that you want to pass to CGI->header(). Use it like this: $_->{'_ep_headers'} = { '-status' => '402 Payment required', '-expires' => '+3d' } Doing a redirect A redirect is moving the browser to another page without actually displaying the current page. You can do it like this: Producing Non-HTML Say you want a CGI binary that creates a gif and not an HTML document. (See the `ifgif.ep' file from the SNMP::Monitor distribution for an example.) Two problems are arising here: First of all you have to create your own headers. Next you *must* prevent that EP is emitting any output, because this might trash your images validity. Here's what to do: my $self = $_; my $cgi = $self->{'cgi'}; $self->_ep_database({'dsn' => 'DBI:mysql:test', 'user' => 'joe', 'password' => 'joe'}); $self->_ep_query({'statement' => "SELECT image FROM images WHERE" . " id = " . $cgi->param('id'), 'result' => 'im', 'resultype' => 'single_hash'}); $self->print($cgi->header('-type' => 'image/gif'), $self->{im}->{'image'}); $self->Stop(); Note the use of $self->Stop()! NPH Scripts The Apache server and other WWW servers have a nice feature that allows you to return HTML pages line by line: If your script is called something like nph-myscript then the server is passing the scripts output to the browser immediately. This is usefull, for example, if you display the output of a traceroute command: You'd like to see any line immediately, but it may take some time untill the next line arrives. Unfortunately NPH scripts are not well suited for HTML::EP: One of EP's major targets is that you need not care for errors: They may occur at any point but are still catched and handled by creating an error message. However, there's no other way to guarantee this without buffering output until the script ends. If you really need to use NPH, do it like this: my $self = $_; local $| = 1; # make sure that Perl isn't buffering $self->print($self->{'cgi'}->header('-type' => 'text/html', '-nph' => 1)); for (my $i = 0; $i < 20; $i++) { $self->print("This is line $i. Waiting one second ...\n") sleep 1; } $self->Stop(); Note, that *no* more output will be produced by EP after calling $self- >Stop()! DEBUGGING Debugging CGI applications is always a problem. The EP module does its best to support you. Whenever you supply a CGI variable *debug*, then the module will enter debugging mode. For example if your document is `/mypage.ep', then tell your browser to fetch `/mypage.ep?debug=1'. You won't see the usual HTML page, but a plain text page with lots of debugging messages and the created HTML source. You may extend the debugging code with sequences like my $self = $_; if ($self->{debug}) { $self->print("I'm here!\n"); } Note that you should not call the *print* function directly, but the *print* method! The former works well in CGI environments, but EP should work even in other environments as well. But sometimes this is not sufficient: What's inserting debugging messages compared to using the Perl debugger? In that case you can emulate a CGI environment as follows: export DOCUMENT_ROOT=/usr/local/www/htdocs export PATH_TRANSLATED=$DOCUMENT_ROOT/mypage.ep export REQUEST_METHOD=GET export QUERY_STRING="var1=val1&var2=val2" perl -d /usr/bin/ep.cgi This allows you single-stepping through your program, displaying variable values and the like. However, the debug variable is obviously a security problem. For that reason the *debughosts* variable is present in HTML::EP::Config: You should set it to a regular expression matching the IP numbers of hosts that are allowed to enable debugging mode. The Makefile.PL should query for appropriate settings automatically while running. EXAMPLES The program comes with a set of examples incorporated. These are: - A simple Unix user administration in examples/admin. - A generic frontend for editing DBI tables in examples/edit.ep - A POP3 client for the web in examples/pop3. - A glimpse based search engine in examples/glimpse. Other examples are: - The SNMP monitor, a utility for watching, logging and displaying interface utilization and status of network interfaces via WWW. See the directory authors/id/JWIED on any CPAN mirror, for example ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN. EXTENSIONS It is quite easy to write own methods. Single-line extensions For example, suggest you want a method for setting EP variables: Once the variable is created, you can access it via $e$ This can be done like this: # Write a handler for ep-env: sub _ep_set ($$) { my($self, $attr) = @_; my $var = $attr->{'var'}; my $val = $attr->{'value'}; $self->{$var} = $val; ''; } # Return an empty string: ''; Note that we used the name _ep_set: By default the EP module takes the method name (ep-env in out case) translates all hyphens to underscores and adds a leading underscore. We'll see in the next section how you can override this behaviour. Multi-line extensions But how to write methods, that use a `' .. `' syntax? As an example, we write a method for creating external files. The method receives two attributes, a *file* attribute for the files name and a *contents* attribute for the files contents. The method can be used in two ways: or like this, in multiline mode: Hi! Here it is: # Write a handler for ep-file: sub _ep_file ($$$) { my($self, $attr, $func) = @_; my $contents = $attr->{contents}; if (!defined($contents)) { # Multiline method, no "contents" $func->{'default'} = 'contents'; # attribute given; return return undef; # undef, until we are called } # again. my $file = $attr->{'file'}; require Symbol; my $fh = Symbol::gensym(); if (!open($fh, ">$file) || !(print $fh ($contents)) || !close($fh)) { die "Error while creating $file: $!"; } ''; } # Return an empty string: ''; The main difference to the previous example is that our method is prepared for being called twice: The first time with an undefined *contents* attribute, in which case it returns immediately, the second time with the value being read from the lines between ep-file and /ep- file. Note the use of the *Symbol* package when accessing files: *Never* use global handles like open(FILE, ...) as this might break future multithreading code! External extensions So far we have discussed only minor extensions that we did install as part of HTML::EP. However, this is somewhat dangerous with mod_perl: Suggest you have multiple virtual hosts. It might happen, that virtual host www.foo.com defines a method ep-file, but www.bar.net defines another. Thus we'd have the classical name clash. To prevent such a namespace pollution, EP supports external extensions with an inheritage model that is borrowed from Perl. Suggest we write a Shop extension. Of course this extension borrows from HTML::EP::Session. Thus we have the following class design: Shop ---isa---> HTML::EP::Session ---isa---> HTML::EP We start writing our Shop extension like any other Perl package: package Shop; @Shop::ISA = qw(HTML::EP::Session); # HTML::EP::Session inherits # from HTML::EP sub _ep_shop_session { my($self, $attr) = @_; # Initialize the session ... ''; } sub init { my $self = shift; if (!$self->{'_ep_shop_initialized'}) { $self->SUPER::init(); $self->{'_ep_funcs'}->{'ep-shop-session'} = { 'method' => '_ep_shop_session' }; $self->{'_ep_shop_initialized'} = 1; } } In the HTML page we load this package as follows: This will do a require Shop and bless the object $self into the class *Shop* and call $self-init()>. Note that we allow the init method to be called more than once, this is important for stacking packages. By default packages are loaded from Perl's system directories. You can use the attribute *lib* to add private directories to the library search path. This can be relative to the servers document root, as in Selfloader methods In the above examples the extension methods have been compiled immediately. This is not always a good idea: For example the `ep-mail' method is loading big external packages like *Mail::Internet* for sending the mail. In such cases you might wish to use HTML::EP's builtin self loader, which is quite similar to that of CGI. We choose `ep-mail' as an example: my $self = $_; # Create a string that can be compiled for loading the method: $AUTOLOADED_SUBS{_ep_mail} = <<'end_of__ep_mail'; require Mail::Internet; sub _ep_mail ($$) { my($self, $attr) = @_; ... } end_of__ep_mail $self->{_ep_funcs}->{ep-mail} = { method => '_ep_mail', default => 'body' }; The advantage is that you have the method available, but the performance penalty of loading it is almost omitted, if the method is not used. PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATIONS The following are merely hints for general Perl programming, but apply in particular to EP programming: Local variables Use local variables instead of hash attributes, as in my $debug; if ($debug = $self->{'debug'}) { ... } if (!$debug) { ... } This is approximately 10-15% faster than the equivalent if ($self->{'debug'}) { ... } if (!$self->{'debug'}) { ... } Of course you win even more with any further use of `$debug'. CHANGES This section describes user visible changes against previous versions. For details and other modifications see the `ChangeLog' file, that is part of the distribution. epparse epperl In previous versions it was not possible to include EP variables or Perl code in attributes of EP commands, unless using a prefix `epparse-' or `epperl-', as in This is no longer the case, because the package now autodetects whether you are using such constructs. (At least it should. :-) The obvious disadvantage is an incompatibility, but the new version is much better readable and surprisingly even (much!) faster, because only hash values are modified and not hash structures. TODO mod_perl support Create an EP server that is accessible via a small C wrapper AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT This module is Copyright (C) 1998-1999 Jochen Wiedmann Am Eisteich 9 72555 Metzingen Germany Phone: +49 7123 14887 Email: joe@ispsoft.de All rights reserved. You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file. SEE ALSO the DBI(3) manpage, the CGI(3) manpage, the HTML::Parser(3) manpage