From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2001-09-04T22:18:25+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20861] Re: Minor cgi.rb question

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Niklas Frykholm <r2d2@acc.umu.se>
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 3:39 AM
Subject: [ruby-talk:20847] Re: Minor cgi.rb question


> I agree that this is not very good... it is too easy to forget the '+'.
> But outputting the data directly is not very good either... you may want
> to postprocess the data or (for example) write it to a database. 

True.

> Also,
> I do not think that HTML generation really belongs in the CGI class.

That's an interesting observation. I think I agree. Of course, they 
would frequently be used together.

> But I do like the idea of using ruby blocks to indicate tag nesting.

So do I. After I got used to it, I liked it very much.

> 
> I think a nice design would be something like this:
> 
> h = HTML.new('HTML3', [:lower_case, :pretty])
> h.html {
> h.body {
> h.h1('Larger header')
> h.h2('Smaller header')
> }
> }
> cgi.out(h.to_s)

I like this. The "case" and "pretty" options are interesting. I assume 
that pretty means indentation and such?

> The #body, #h1 and #h2 methods would append their data to the h object.
> Do you agree or would you rather see something else? 

This seems good IMO.

> Is HTML a good class
> name or would HTMLGeneration be better? It is easy enough to code up once
> the interface is decided.

HTML is too general a name. HTMLGen or something is better.

You might take a look at something I started once. It is in many ways
crude and inelegant, and if I were going to finish it I would actually
redesign it. See RHH (Ruby HTML Helper) on my (almost nonexistent) 
Ruby page at http://hypermetrics.com/ruby.html

Cheers,
Hal