From: Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla <dido@...>
Date: 2002-11-22T18:22:36+09:00
Subject: Re: perl with HTML::Mason or Ruby with Eruby ??

On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 12:35:36AM +0900, Markus Jais wrote:
> hello
> 
> I told a friend how cool Ruby is and he imediatelly liked it.
> but now he switched to Perl again because of HTML::Mason
> (http://www.masonhq.com)
> 
> I am now Mason Guru and told hin that there is Eruby.
> but Mason seems to have more cool features like Eruby (according to him).

This Freshmeat article has some ideas I actually used to separate HTML
generation from the actual business logic of CGI scripts.  I
incorporated some ideas into code that went into a fairly complex CGI
script I once wrote.

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/447/ 

It's not flexible enough to provide complete separation (I had to
generate a little HTML for things like tables), but it was able to
accomplish the job well enough.  I'm working on further extending the
ideas here to add conditionals and iterators for web page templates.  I
imagine we'd have something like:

<html xmlns:rtmpl="http://dido.imperium.ph/rtmpl/">
<body>
  <rtmpl:if variable="condition">
     <rtmpl:then>
       <p>condition is set</p>
     </rtmpl:then>
     <rtmpl:else>
       <p>condition was not set</p>
     </rtmpl:else>
  </rtmpl:if>

  <p>Condition value is: <rtmpl:sub variable="condition"/></p>

  <table>
    <tr><td>A</td><td>B</td></tr>
    <rtmpl:iterate method="imethod" variables="a,b">
       <tr>
         <td><rtmpl:sub variable="a"/></td>
         <td><rtmpl:sub variable="b"/></td>
       </tr>
    </rtmpl:iterate>
  </table>
</body>
</html>

An <rtmpl:if/> would just test the variable given and then output the
text inside <rtmpl:then/> or <rtmpl:else/> depending on whether the
variable is true or false.  <rtmpl:sub/> will simply be substituted by
the value of the variable given.  <rtmpl:iterate/> effectively runs an
iterator method associated with some object, binds some local variables
(the values yielded by the iterator), and repeatedly outputs its
children until the iterator is spent.

I'm working on writing this right now...

-- 
Rafael R. Sevilla <dido at imperium dot ph>	+63(2)8123151
Software Developer, Imperium Technology Inc.	+63(917)4458925