NAME¶
Mason::Manual::Intro - Getting started with Mason
DESCRIPTION¶
A few quick examples to get your feet wet with Mason. See Mason::Manual::Setup
for how to use Mason to generate web sites.
EXAMPLE 1¶
Hello world (from command-line)¶
After installing Mason, you should have a "mason" command in your
installation path (e.g. "/usr/local/bin"). Try this:
% mason
Hello! The local time is <% scalar(localtime) %>.
^D
(where '^D' means ctrl-D or EOF). You should see something like
Hello! The local time is Wed Mar 2 17:11:54 2011.
The "mason" command reads in a Mason
component (template), runs
it, and prints the result to standard output. Notice that the tag
<% scalar(localtime) %>
was replaced with the value of its expression. This is called a
substitution tag and is a central piece of Mason syntax.
EXAMPLE 2¶
Email generator (from script)¶
The command line is good for trying quick things, but eventually you're going to
want to put your Mason components in files.
In a test directory, create a directory "comps" and create a file
"email.mc" with the following:
<%class>
has 'amount';
has 'name';
</%class>
Dear <% $.name %>,
We are pleased to inform you that you have won $<% sprintf("%.2f", $.amount) %>!
Sincerely,
The Lottery Commission
<%init>
die "amount must be a positive value!" unless $.amount > 0;
</%init>
In addition to the substitution tag we've seen before, we declare two
attributes, "amount" and "name", to be passed into
the component; and we declare a piece of initialization code to validate the
amount.
In the same test directory, create a script "test.pl" with the
following:
1 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
2 use Mason;
3 my $interp = Mason->new(comp_root => 'comps', data_dir => 'data');
4 print $interp->run('/email', name => 'Joe', amount => '1500')->output;
Line 3 creates a
Mason interpreter, the main Mason object. It specifies
two parameters: a
component root, indicating the directory hierarchy
where your components will live; and a
data directory, which Mason will
use for internal purposes such as class generation and caching.
Line 4 runs the template - notice that the ".mc" extension is added
automatically - passing values for the "name" and "amount"
attributes.
Run "test.pl", and you should see
Dear Joe,
We are pleased to inform you that you have won $1500.00!
Sincerely,
The Lottery Commission
SEE ALSO¶
Mason::Manual::Tutorial, Mason::Manual
AUTHOR¶
Jonathan Swartz <swartz@pobox.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Jonathan Swartz.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.