Thanks for these additions Kee. This fixes two of my biggest frustrations
with Embperl. Good job and keep on keeping on.
-Allen
On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 08:47:28PM -0400, Kee Hinckley wrote:
> A year or so ago I burst back onto the list with some ideas about
> boosting Embperl support, and then I promptly disappeared (my
> apologies, work and personal stuff took over my life). Those comments
> still stand, but I need to approach things a bit more slowly and
> realistically.
>
> >I think you should look at Catalyst, perhaps the most active Perl Web
> >development framework. It's a full-featured MVC framework that meets
> >all of
> >the above requirements.
>
> I actually have a library that integrates Embperl into Catalyst so
> that you ca use it instead of the default system (Template Toolkit).
> Embperl is faster and uses less memory than TT. I have the module
> working in a production site, and while it needs documentation and
> code cleanup, I'd be happy to share it with folks and even set up a
> source repository if people are interested in assisting with the
> development.
>
> I've also added some Embperl syntax additions (see below).
>
> I think the biggest barrier to expanding Embperl's audience (and
> development) is its heavy reliance on some pretty obfuscated C code.
> On the other hand, that's one of the reasons it's faster and less
> memory hungry than the alternatives. A cleaner rewrite would be nice,
> but I think that even just making it more extensible in Perl would be
> a big bonus. In particular, the ability to write syntax extensions in
> Perl would be a big win and would make it easier to create libraries
> to help people move from other systems. The other piece that would
> greatly help adoption would be integrating an AJAX system into
> Embperl. I'm a big fan of MooTools (it has a *very* well designed
> object model, it's clean, and it's small). Anything we could do to
> make developing AJAX-based systems in Embperl would be a big win.
>
> Aside from the speed/memory issues, the place Embperl excels is
> security. Embperl understands the syntax of the HTML. Every other
> templating language out there relies on the programmer to properly
> escape their code to prevent XSS vulnerabilities. Embperl *defaults*
> to properly escaping output--that's a huge win. Finally, Embperl's
> ability to auto-fill forms *greatly* reduces the amount of code in
> many applications. Embperl's MVC support is definitely limited, and
> that's why I moved to Catalyst as an MVC platform. At some point a
> version of Embperl that blocks out the code no longer needed in that
> environment might be a good idea.
>
> Syntax Additions
>
> [% %]
> Unescaped output. Much easier than [+ do { local($escmode) = 4; ...
> } +], particularly useful for generating Javascript.
>
> [$ set VARIABLE EXPRESSION $]
> Sets a module-local "variable" (actually a method call) to the
> passed-in value[s]. E.g.
>
> [$ set TITLE "My Web Page" $]
>
> The magic comes in retrieval. The simple case works as
> expected.
>
> <title>[+ $epreq->TITLE() +]</title>
>
> Will return the value appropriate for the current context.
> Which means the value set in the current file, or (if this file
> was a template (object_base), the file that is the actual
> object. In this sense it's just a slightly easier way to do
> what is already possible. More interesting, however is when
> the method is passed a non-zero value.
>
> In our template, we define the following.
>
> [$ set CSS qw(template helper $]
>
> In our html file that it executes, we define this:
>
> [$ set CSS qw(index helper $]
>
> Back in the template, we have the following code. Note that
> this can occur before any of the other files are included.
>
> <style type="text/css">
> <!--
> [$ foreach $file ($epreq->CSS(1)) $]
> @import url("/styles/[+ $file +].css");
> [$ endforeach $]
> -->
> </style>
>
> The call with the "all" argument set to true will return all of
> the values of of all of the "CSS()" methods (with non-unique
> elements removed). It will include all methods of all files
> that list this file as an "ISA".
> [- Execute({ isa => 'filename.epl' }) -] or the case of
> "Execute('*')" where the ISA relationship is implicit.
>
> So the above code will generate:
>
> <style type="text/css">
> <!--
> @import url("/styles/template.css");
> @import url("/styles/helper.css");
> @import url("/styles/index.css");
> -->
> </style>
>
> This allows you to create templates which will include CSS,
> Javascript or
> other elements that are required by individual Embperl files that
> aren't
> even known about at the time the template is created.
>
> There are a few other additions I've made as well, but the [$ set $]
> command is
> probably the most useful.
>
>
>
>
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--
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'The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception', by David Corn
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77956,00.html)
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