From: Chris Pine <glyconis@...>
Date: 2005-04-19T14:10:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Html Tag Generation

I use a pretty low-tech trick myself, but it works pretty well.  Just
a few methods and a couple of variables:

  @page = []
  @depth = 0

  #  Outputs string to page being generated.
  def puts string
    @page << '  '*@depth+string
  end
  
  
  #  Plain old paragraph.
  def para (attributes = {}, &block)
    method_missing(:p, attributes, &block)
  end
  
  
  #  Centered paragraph.
  def parac (attributes = {}, &block)
    attributes[:style] = 'text-align: center'
    para(attributes, &block)
  end
  
  
  #  Makes a generic tag; I never defined the "html" method,
  #  or "head" or "body" or "h1" or "br"... so they all use
  #  this code to build the appropriate tag.  (I couldn't do
  #  this with the "p" tag, since "p" *is* defined as a method
  #  so I used "para" and "parac" above.
  def method_missing (methodSymbol, attributes = {})
    methodName = methodSymbol.to_s
    
    attribString = ''
    attributes.each do |key, val|
      raise methodName+' '+attributes.inspect if (key.nil? || val.nil?)
      attribString += ' '+key.to_s+'="'+val+'"'
    end
    if (!block_given?)
      puts '<'+methodName+attribString+' />'
    else
      puts '<'+methodName+attribString+'>'
      @depth += 1
      blockReturn = yield
      puts blockReturn if (blockReturn.kind_of?(String))
      @depth -= 1
      puts '</'+methodName+'>'
    end
    nil
  end


This does a pretty good job of making readable html.  To use it:

    html do
      head do
        link(:rel=>'stylesheet', :type=>'text/css', :href=>'local.css')
        title do
          'pine.fm &mdash; ' + theTitle
        end
      end
      body do
        div(:id=>'headerBar') do
...

and so on.  You can, of course, use {,} instead of do,end.  It also
allows for <br /> style tags by calling the tag with a string instead
of a block.

Nothing too fancy, but it serves me well,

Chris