Re: Ruby and HTML

On Fri, 31 May 2002, Sean O'Dell wrote:

> I've read up on a lot of the older discussions regarding using Ruby for 
> CGI scripts and HTML generation, but I was wondering if anyone had any 
> opinions about the current state of the HTML generation.

If you mean automated production of HTML, I don't know. Never found that
particularly useful. 

If you mean improvements to CGI, take a look at the early pilot release of
ILE (Interactive Learning Environment) at http://virtualschool.edu:8083

Its based on Steven Stanfield's Ocelot servlet engine. We're hoping for
a combined release in a few days as soon as we stomp the last few bugs.

> I prefer a templating system like HTML::Template or PageTemplate.  Has 
> anyone had any good/bad experiences with these?  I would be much happier 
> with a C/C++ .so implementation for Linux over Ruby code for parsing the 
> HTML template, for the added speed mainly...is there anything out there 
> like that?

ILE provides a Templating system but its not like these. Here's HelloWorld
in ILE:

class HelloWorld < ILE::Page
	def run
		send Template.prefix self
		send %Q[<h2>Hello World</h2>]
		send Template.prefix.self
	end
end

where Template is a ruby class whose prefix/postfix methods are under your
control. Which explains why I don't use HTML emitting code: its just not
enough trouble to write <h2>...</h2> and <p>, which is all that most pages
need anyway, to justify learning yet another layer of code. The complicated
html winds up in the Templates, which is written once and can be forgotten.