NAME¶
CGI::XMLForm - Extension of CGI.pm which reads/generates formated XML.
NB: This is a subclass of CGI.pm, so can be used in it's place.
SYNOPSIS¶
use CGI::XMLForm;
my $cgi = new CGI::XMLForm;
if ($cgi->param) {
print $cgi->header, $cgi->pre($cgi->escapeHTML($cgi->toXML));
}
else {
open(FILE, "test.xml") or die "Can't open: $!";
my @queries = ('/a', '/a/b*', '/a/b/c*', /a/d');
print $cgi->header,
$cgi->pre($cgi->escapeHTML(
join "\n", $cgi->readXML(*FILE, @queries)));
}
DESCRIPTION¶
This module can either create form field values from XML based on XQL/XSL style
queries (full XQL is _not_ supported - this module is designed for speed), or
it can create XML from form values. There are 2 key functions: toXML and
readXML.
toXML¶
The module takes form fields given in a specialised format, and outputs them to
XML based on that format. The idea is that you can create forms that define
the resulting XML at the back end.
The format for the form elements is:
<input name="/body/p/ul/li">
which creates the following XML:
<body>
<p>
<ul>
<li>Entered Value</li>
</ul>
</p>
</body>
It's the user's responsibility to design appropriate forms to make use of this
module. Details of how come below...
Also supported are attribute form items, that allow creation of element
attributes. The syntax for this is:
<input name="/body/p[@id='mypara' and @onClick='someFunc()']/@class">
Which creates the following XML:
<body>
<p id="mypara" onClick="someFunc()" class="Entered Value"></p>
</body>
Also possible are relative paths. So the following form elements:
<input type="hidden" name="/table/tr">
<input type="text" name="td">
<input type="text" name="td">
<input type="text" name="../tr/td">
Will create the following XML:
<table>
<tr>
<td>value1</td>
<td>value2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>value3</td>
</tr>
</table>
SYNTAX¶
The following is a brief syntax guideline
Full paths start with a "/" :
"/table/tr/td"
Relative paths start with either ".." or just a tag name.
"../tr/td"
"td"
Relative paths go at the level above the previous path, unless the
previous path was also a relative path, in which case it goes at the
same level. This seems confusing at first (you might expect it to always
go at the level above the previous element), but it makes your form easier to
design. Take the following example: You have a timesheet (see the example
supplied in the archive) that has monday,tuesday,etc. Our form can look like
this:
<input type="text" name="/timesheet/projects/project/@Name">
<input type="text" name="monday">
<input type="text" name="tuesday">
...
Rather than:
<input type="text" name="/timesheet/projects/project/@Name">
<input type="text" name="monday">
<input type="text" name="../tuesday">
<input type="text" name="../wednesday">
...
If unsure I recommend using full paths, relative paths are great for repeating
groups of data, but weak for heavily structured data. Picture the following
paths:
/timesheet/employee/name/forename
../surname
title
../department
This actually creates the following XML:
<timesheet>
<employee>
<name>
<forename>val1</forname>
<surname>val2</surname>
<title>val3></title>
</name>
<department>val4</department>
</employee>
</timesheet>
Confusing eh? Far better to say:
/timesheet/employee/name/forename
/timesheet/employee/name/surname
/timesheet/employee/name/title
/timesheet/employee/department
Or alternatively, better still:
/timesheet/employee/name (Make hidden and no value)
forename
surname
title
../department
Attributes go in square brackets. Attribute names are preceded with an
"@", and attribute values follow an "=" sign and are
enclosed in quotes. Multiple attributes are separated with " and ".
/table[@bgcolor="blue" and @width="100%"]/tr/td
If setting an attribute, it follows after the tag that it is associated with,
after a "/" and it's name is preceded with an "@".
/table/@bgcolor
readXML¶
readXML takes either a file handle or text as the first parameter and a list of
queries following that. The XML is searched for the queries and it returns a
list of tuples that are the query and the match.
It's easier to demonstrate this with an example. Given the following XML:
<a>Foo
<b>Bar
<c>Fred</c>
<c>Blogs</c>
</b>
<b>Red
<c>Barbara</c>
<c>Cartland</c>
</b>
<d>Food</d>
</a>
And the following queries:
/a
/a/b*
c*
/a/d
it returns the following result as a list:
/a
Foo
/a/b
Bar
c
Fred
c
Blogs
/a/b
Red
c
Barbara
c
Cartland
/a/d
Food
(NB: This is slightly incorrect - for /a and /a/b it will return "Foo\n
" and "Bar\n " respectively).
The queries support relative paths like toXML (including parent paths), and they
also support wildcards using ".*" or ".*?" (preferably
".*?" as it's probably a better match). If a wildcard is specified
the results will have the actual value substituted with the wildcard.
Wildcards are a bit experimental, so be careful ;-)
Caveats¶
There are a few caveats to using this module:
- •
- Parameters must be on the form in the order they will appear in the
XML.
- •
- There is no support for multiple attribute setting (i.e. you can only set
one attribute for an element at a time).
- •
- You can't set an attribute and a value for that element, it's one
or the other.
- •
- You can use this module in place of CGI.pm, since it's a subclass.
- •
- There are bound to be lots of bugs! Although it's in production use right
now - just watch CPAN for regular updates.
AUTHOR¶
Matt Sergeant msergeant@ndirect.co.uk, sergeant@geocities.com
Based on an original concept, and discussions with, Jonathan Eisenzopf. Thanks
to the Perl-XML mailing list for suggesting the XSL syntax.
Special thanks to Francois Belanger (francois@sitepak.com) for his mentoring and
help with the syntax design.
SEE ALSO¶
CGI(1), CGI::XML