Thank heavens that Andy put lots of snippets of code in
his examples. Looking at other people's code is very much
part of my learning process.
I'm new to tt2, and new to OO programming in general. There
is a paradigm shift that I'm still wrapping my mind around.
Questions:
There is a ton of perl code out there to learn from. Sysadmins
have littered the net with scripts. Web spinners have
countless cgi scripts posted.
Q1: Where do the templates hide?
That is, where can I go to see entire small to medium sized
projects, as opposed to snippets? (Ok, where can I get some one
else's round rock to use as start to make my wheel?)
Q2: In several places browsing the list archives, I see reference
to separating the logic from the content. I've been able to do
this somewhat. My content div is only content, with a call to
header and footer. But my sidenav.inc file is an awful mix of
template code with chunks of display. The net effect is
cluttered. Does anyone have a pointer to how to make this
separation cleaner?
Q3. How do you make templates that are both easy to read and
that create output that's easy to read. I've tried various
combinations of the space slurping options, but I end up with too
much or too little space, and awful formatting. I can see
one way would be to build the entire page as a single string,
do a clear, then output the string. This means that I have
to track the formatting inside the template logic, which seems
awkward. Alternately, I have to create a pretty printer for
each style of file. Set your template to look pretty, then
run the output through pretty. This is better, but doing the
pp code could take longer than doing the template.
Here's an example: The purpose of this code is to turn a
directory structure into a menu. E.g. If I move a template file
in the tt2 tree, then the resulting menu for the web site
does the right thing. This way, the content directory is
a bunch of static divs. Most of the appearance is controlled
by the style sheet.
This gives the same effect as the TT2
web site, where clicking on any menu item expands just that item,
so that at any point you can see the siblings of all path
elements between you and the top. Sort of a bread-slice
effect instead of a bread crumb effect.
The only caveats: For any directory
there must be a file IN it with the same name Eg.
Foo must contain Foo.tt2. If you want menu items in sequence
other than alphabetical, you can prepend a digit_ to the front
of the name so that alphabetical order is consistent with desired
order. Since there is also a top level nav to get to this part
of the tree, there is a reference to "Section" which is the
current top level division of the site.
You will also see chunks of debugging stuff. I wanted the output
near the item it was working with. I'm sure there's
a better way to do this, but I've not found it yet.
It's a bad example. The code is clunky. It's ugly.
It's mother dresses it funny. How should it be done?
<div id="vnavbox">
[% USE String %]
[% USE dir = Directory("tt2/" _ Section ) %]
[% #The next two lines figure out how to make the links
# to the right page as relative links.
depth = template.name.split('/') ;
lrtop = String.new('../').repeat(depth.size - 1) ; %]
[% Level = 0 #Formatting can depend on level in the tree. %]
[% INCLUDE subdir %]
[% BLOCK subdir %]
[% Level = Level + 1 %]
[% PROCESS set_html_tags %]
[% FOREACH entry = dir.list %]
[%#<p>$Level $entry.name</p>a%]
[% plainentry = String.new(entry.path).shift('tt2/') %]
[% INCLUDE makelink %]
[%# The logic in the next few lines determines
whether we scan directories. In essence we want to see
the siblings of every path element down to the present
location. To do that we compare the path for the entry
to the path of the template. The direntry starts at a
different point, so we have to prune the leading tt2 off
of it. %]
[% IF entry.isdir %]
[% IF template.name.match(plainentry) %]
[% entry.scan %]
[% INCLUDE subdir dir=entry %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
[% BLOCK makelink %]
[%# We generate both the link name and the link path
from the directory path of the item we're looking at%]
[% truepath = entry.path.replace('tt2/','')
# Take tt2 off the front end of the path%]
[% truepath = truepath.replace('.tt2','.html')
# Change the .tt2 at the end to .html %]
[% linkname = entry.name.replace('^[0-9_]*','')
#Filenames may have a number_ prefix to force order %]
[% linkname = linkname.replace('_',' ')
#Make the link more readable %]
[% linkname = linkname.replace('\.tt2$','')
#Trim the .tt2 %]
[% IF template.name == plainentry %]
[% class = 'class="current"'
#Set how the current page in the menu is highlighted %]
[% ELSE %]
[% class = '' %]
[% END %]
[%#<p>pe: $plainentry <BR> tn:$template.name<p>%]
[% IF entry.isdir %]
[% link = lrtop _ truepath _ '/' _ entry.name _ '.html' %]
[%# <p>D: tp $truepath<br> en=$entry.name</p>%]
[% ELSE %]
[% link = lrtop _ truepath %]
[%# <p>F:tp= $truepath </p>%]
[%# We want the directory item itself to have a page, but we
don't want to show that filename in the tree. So we
abort creating a link in the menu for a file name that
is the same as it's parent name.
This why the IF section above duplicates the last
path element with a .html for directories. %]
[% plainfile = entry.name %]
[% lastchunk = entry.path.split('/').last(2).first %]
[%# <p>lc: $lastchunk en: <br>$entry.name </p> %]
[% IF lastchunk == entry.name.replace('\.tt2','') %]
[% RETURN %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
[%# IF plainfile != lastdir; %]
$OTag<a href=$link $class >$linkname </a>$CTag
[%# END %]
[% END %]
[% BLOCK set_html_tags %]
{%# This section assigns a different class to each menu level.
Format using the style sheet. %]
[% SWITCH Level %]
[% CASE 0 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L1">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 1 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L1">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 2 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L2">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 3 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L3">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 4 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L4">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 5 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L5">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% CASE 6 %]
[% OTag='<p class="L6">'; CTag='</p>'; %]
[% END %]
[% END %]
</div>
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