HTML::AsSubs(3p)

NAME
HTML::AsSubs - functions that construct a HTML syntax tree

SYNOPSIS
 use HTML::AsSubs;
 $h = body(
           h1("This is the heading"),
           p("This is the first paragraph which contains a ",
             a({href=>'link.html'}, "link"),
             " and an ",
             img({src=>'img.gif', alt=>'image'}),
             "."
            ),
          );
 print $h->as_HTML;

DESCRIPTION
This module exports functions that can be used to construct various HTML elements. The functions are named after the tags of the correponding HTML element and are all written in lower case. If the first argument is a hash reference then it will be used to initialize the attributes of this element. The remaining arguments are regarded as content.

For a similar idea (i.e., it's another case where the syntax tree of the Perl source mirrors the syntax tree of the HTML produced), see HTML::Element's "new_from_lol" method.

For what I now think is a cleaner implementation of this same idea, see the excellent module "XML::Generator", which is what I suggest for actual real-life use. (I suggest this over "HTML::AsSubs" and over "CGI.pm"'s HTML-making functions.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This module was inspired by the following message:

 Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 16:11:30 +0100
 Subject: Wow! I have a large lightbulb above my head!

 Take a moment to consider these lines:

 %OVERLOAD=( '""' => sub { join("", @{$_[0]}) } );

 sub html { my($type)=shift; bless ["<$type>", @_, "</$type>"]; }

 :-)  I *love* Perl 5!  Thankyou Larry and Ilya.

 Regards,
 Tim Bunce.

 p.s. If you didn't get it, think about recursive data types: html(html())
 p.p.s. I'll turn this into a much more practical example in a day or two.
 p.p.p.s. It's a pity that overloads are not inherited. Is this a bug?

BUGS
The exported link() function overrides the builtin link() function. The exported tr() function must be called using &tr(...) syntax because it clashes with the builtin tr/../../ operator.

SEE ALSO
HTML::Element, XML::Generator

Private Functions

  _elem()
The _elem() function is wrapped by all the html 'tag' functions. It takes a tag-name, optional hashref of attributes and a list of content as parameters.