Uri, thanks for the boatload of useful suggestions! I will am busying myself with understanding and applying them.
Regarding Template::Simple, this module isn’t among the many that my host has installed, and I have not had success trying to learn how to install stuff from CPAN. Fortunately I’m beginning to get the hang of Template Toolkit, and I may need it for more complex situations that come up. Switching from HTML::template this year was a challenge, and I had to rewrite a lot of my perl to go with it. I know that most perl people are good at using the CPAN resource, but I’m just a high school teacher who dabbles in perl. And at age 74 I have to be choosy about which learning curves I take on! Still, if anyone can point me to a “beginners guide” to using CPAN, I’ll take a look at it. Rick Triplett > On Oct 29, 2018, at 3:52 PM, Uri Guttman <u...@stemsystems.com > <mailto:u...@stemsystems.com>> wrote: > > On 10/28/18 4:45 PM, Rick T wrote: >> As a novice in perl I realize that it’s a bit presumptuous for me to attempt >> references and complex data structures. But I had a need and gave it a shot >> — a failing shot. I’ve been fiddling with my failure, almost mindlessly, all >> weekend; now I need some help. >> >> Below is the template segment I am trying to populate with data, and >> following it is the segment of code that attempts to call it. The output I >> get in my browser is persistently empty, with every instance of [% %] being >> replaced with banks. >> >> > > i have many small comments as well as a larger idea that you try > Template::Simple instead. it allows for arrays (such as you have) of hashes > to be used without any looping code in the template itself. in fact it > doesn't support any logic in the template as that should always been in perl > IMNSHO. it is cleaner, faster and more flexible to organize data in perl than > to do it in a template. >> start HTML ------------ >> <table> >> [% FOREACH course IN courses %] >> <br><br> >> <h2 id="[% course.cat_abbr %]">[% courses.category %]</h2><br><br> > > i was confused by the courses.category there. it should be course.category as > courses has only hashes and no values in it. > > i don't see how you are making a table for each category. it seems to be one > for each data row. but that is a different problem. nut i see that > these are all checkboxes so that make work. >> <table> <caption> [% course.caption %] </caption> >> <!-- LEVEL 4 --> >> <tr style="background-color: Plum"> >> <td>L4 (HN)</td> >> <td><input type="checkbox" name="course_file" >> value="[% course.title %]_q1l4v[% courses.version %]"> 1-4</td> >> >> >> my ( $cat_abbr, $category, $title, $caption, $version ); # for Template >> my ( @courses, $string ); # for calculating >> while ( my $line = <DATA> ) { > > do your chomp here as it is clearer to chomp the line instead of the last > field on the line. >> ( $cat_abbr, $category, $title, $version ) = split /\t/, $line; > > declare those variables there and not earlier. they are only used inside the > loop. >> chomp $version; >> $caption = $title; >> $caption =~ s{_|\-}{ }xmsg; # replace _ and - with space > use // for regexes without any use of / inside. also that regex is better as > a character class [_-]. the - doesn't need to be escaped in a regex but only > inside a char class. and if - is the first or last char in a char class (as i > showed) it doesn't need escaping. > > and even better, replacing single chars is best done with the tr/// op. that > would be tr/-_/ / > >> $caption =~ s{\b(\w)}{\U$1}g; # impose simple titlecase >> $caption = "$caption" . ' (version ' . "$version" . ')'; > better as: > > $caption .= "(version $version)" ; >> >> push @courses, >> { >> cat_abbr => $cat_abbr, >> category => $category, >> caption => $caption, >> title => $title, >> version => $version, >> } > you didn't end that statement with a ;. it is legal as ; are really statement > separators and that is the last statement in the loop block. still it > is good style to always end statements with ; > > >> } >> >> my %list = (list => \@courses); >> >> # Call Template Toolkit >> local $| = 1; # auto flush buffer >> my $path = "/big/dom/x$server/www/templates"; >> my $tt = Template->new( >> {INCLUDE_PATH => "$path"} > > don't quote single variables like that. it isn't needed, it is slower due to > an extra copy and it could be a bug if you pass a reference that gets > converted to a string. >> ); >> my $input = 'course_catalog.tt'; >> my $vars = \%list; > you don't need $vars. you can just pass \%list to the call. >> print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n"; >> $tt->process($input, $vars) >> or die $tt->error(); >> > > if i have the spare time, i will post how to do this with template::simple. > > uri >
