NAME

Template::Plugin::XML - XML plugin for the Template Toolkit

SYNOPSIS

    [% USE XML;
       dom    = XML.dom('foo.xml');
       xpath  = XML.xpath('bar.xml');
       simple = XML.simple('baz.xml');
       rss    = XML.simple('news.rdf');
    %]
    
    [% USE XML(file='foo.xml');
       dom    = XML.dom
       xpath  = XML.xpath
       # ...etc...
    %]

    [% USE XML(dir='/path/to/xml');
       file  = XML.file('foo.xml' );
       dom   = file.dom
       xpath = file.xpath
       # ...etc...
    %]

DESCRIPTION

The Template-XML distribution provides a number of Template Toolkit plugin modules for working with XML.

The Template::Plugin::XML module is a front-end to the various other XML plugin modules. Through this you can access XML files and directories of XML files via the Template::Plugin::XML::File and Template::Plugin::XML::Directory modules (which subclass from the Template::Plugin::File and Template::Plugin::Directory modules respectively). You can then create a Document Object Model (DOM) from an XML file (Template::Plugin::XML::DOM), examine it using XPath queries (Template::Plugin::XML::XPath), turn it into a Perl data structure (Template::Plugin::XML::Simple) or parse it as an RSS (RDF Site Summary) file.

The basic XML plugins were distributed as part of the Template Toolkit until version 2.15 released in May 2006. At this time they were extracted into this separate Template-XML distribution and an alpha version of this Template::Plugin::XML front-end module was added.

The Template::Plugin::XML module is still in development and not guaranteed to work correctly yet. However, all the other XML plugins are more-or-less exactly as they were in TT version 2.14 and should work as normal.

For general information on the Template Toolkit see the documentation for the the Template manpage module or http://template-toolkit.org. For information on using plugins, see the Template::Plugins manpage and USE in the Template::Manual::Directives manpage. For further information on XML, see http://xml.com/.

METHODS

The XML plugin module provides a number of methods to create various other XML plugin objects.

`file(name)`

Creates a Template::Plugin::XML::File object. This is a subclass of Template::Plugin::File.

`dir(path)`

Creates a Template::Plugin::XML::Directory object. This is a subclass of Template::Plugin::Directory.

`dom()`

Generate a Document Object Module from an XML file. This can be called against a directory, file or an XML plugin object, as long as the source XML filename is defined somewhere along the line.

    [% dom = XML.dom(filename) %]

    [% file = XML.file(filename);
       dom  = file.dom
    %]

    [% dir = XML.dir(dirname);
       dom = dir.dom(filename)
    %]

`xpath()`

Perform XPath queries on the file. Like the dom() method, xpath() can be called against a file, directory or an XML plugin object.

    [% xpath = XML.xpath(filename) %]

    [% file  = XML.file(filename);
       xpath = file.xpath
    %]

    [% dir   = XML.dir(dirname);
       xpath = dir.xpath(filename)
    %]

`simple()`

TODO: As per dom() and xpath() but for XML::Simple

`rss()`

TODO: As per dom(), xpath() and simple() but for XML::RSS

XML PLUGINS

These are the XML plugins provided in this distribution.

Template::Plugin::XML

Front-end module to the XML plugin collection.

Template::Plugin::XML::File

This plugin module is used to represent individual XML files. It is a subclass of the Template::Plugin::File module, providing the additional dom(), xpath(), simple() and other methods relevant to XML files.

Template::Plugin::XML::Directory

This plugin module is used to represent directories of XML files. It is a subclass of the Template::Plugin::Directory module and provides the same additional XML related methods as Template::Plugin::XML::File.

Template::Plugin::XML::DOM

Plugin interface providing access to the XML::DOM module.

    [% USE XD = XML.Dom %]
    [% dom = XD.parse_file('example.xml') %]
    [% pages = dom.getElementsByTagName('page') %]

Template::Plugin::XML::RSS

Plugin interface providing access to the XML::RSS module.

    [% USE news = XML.RSS('news.rdf') -%]
    [% FOREACH item IN news.items -%]
       * [% item.title %]
    [% END %]

Template::Plugin::XML::Simple

Plugin interface providing access to the XML::Simple module.

    [%  USE xml = XML.Simple('example.xml') %]

Template::Plugin::XML::XPath

Plugin interface providing access to the XML::XPath module.

    [% USE xpath = XML.XPath('example.xml');
       bar = xpath.find('/foo/bar');
    %]

AUTHORS

Andy Wardley wrote the Template Toolkit plugin modules, with assistance from Simon Matthews in the case of the XML::DOM plugin. Matt Sergeant wrote the XML::XPath module. Enno Derksen and Clark Cooper wrote the XML::DOM module. Jonathan Eisenzopf wrote the XML::RSS module. Grant McLean wrote the XML::Simple module. Clark Cooper and Larry Wall wrote the XML::Parser module. James Clark wrote the expat library.

COPYRIGHT

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.