NAME

HTML::Formatter - Base class for HTML formatters

VERSION

version 2.14

SYNOPSIS

use HTML::FormatSomething;
my $infile  = "whatever.html";
my $outfile = "whatever.file";
open OUT, ">$outfile"
 or die "Can't write-open $outfile: $!\n";

print OUT HTML::FormatSomething->format_file(
  $infile,
    'option1' => 'value1',
    'option2' => 'value2',
    ...
);
close(OUT);

DESCRIPTION

HTML::Formatter is a base class for classes that take HTML and format it to some output format. When you take an object of such a base class and call $formatter-format( $tree )> with an HTML::TreeBuilder (or HTML::Element) object, they return the appropriately formatted string for the input HTML.

HTML formatters are able to format a HTML syntax tree into various printable formats. Different formatters produce output for different output media. Common for all formatters are that they will return the formatted output when the format() method is called. The format() method takes a HTML::Element object (usually the HTML::TreeBuilder root object) as parameter.

The distribution name has been changed to HTML-Formatter as detailed in "DISTRIBUTION NAME"

METHODS

new

my $formatter = FormatterClass->new(
    option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
);

This creates a new formatter object with the given options.

format_file

format_from_file

$string = FormatterClass->format_file(
    $html_source,
    option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
    );

Return a string consisting of the result of using the given class to format the given HTML file according to the given (optional) options. Internally it calls SomeClass->new( ... )->format( ... ) on a new HTML::TreeBuilder object based on the given HTML file.

format_string

format_from_string

$string = FormatterClass->format_string(
    $html_source,
    option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
    );

Return a string consisting of the result of using the given class to format the given HTML source according to the given (optional) options. Internally it calls SomeClass->new( ... )->format( ... ) on a new HTML::TreeBuilder object based on the given source.

format

my $render_string = $formatter->format( $html_tree_object );

This renders the given HTML object according to the options set for $formatter.

After you've used a particular formatter object to format a particular HTML tree object, you probably should not use either again.

DISTRIBUTION NAME

This module was originally named HTML-Format despite not containing a HTML::Format module within it. As rules on naming have been taken more seriously, and the PAUSE toolchain adapted so that getting the distribution indexed was more difficult, it became obvious that I should rename the distribution to HTML-Formatter matching the base HTML::Formatter module.

As of release 2.13 this is released as the HTML-Formatter distribution with corresponding changes to the git repository name and associated items.

Due to the way that the module is put together this should have no effect on code using the module. The only issues will be where the distribution name was used within dependancies.

SEE ALSO

The three specific formatters:-

HTML::FormatText

Format HTML into plain text

HTML::FormatPS

Format HTML into postscript

HTML::FormatRTF

Format HTML into Rich Text Format

Also the HTML manipulation libraries used - HTML::TreeBuilder, HTML::Element and HTML::Tree

INSTALLATION

See perlmodinstall for information and options on installing Perl modules.

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

You can make new bug reports, and view existing ones, through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTML-Formatter.

AVAILABILITY

The project homepage is https://metacpan.org/release/HTML-Formatter.

The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a CPAN site near you, or see https://metacpan.org/module/HTML::Formatter/.

AUTHORS

• Nigel Metheringham <nigelm@cpan.org>

• Sean M Burke <sburke@cpan.org>

• Gisle Aas <gisle@ActiveState.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2015 by Nigel Metheringham, 2002-2005 Sean M Burke, 1999-2002 Gisle Aas.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.