NAME

TemplateTest.pl - Test Penguin Greetings Embperl templates


SYNOPSIS

  TemplateTest.pl [-b] [-c .../pgreet.conf] [-d] [-p .../cards.conf] template.tpl.html var1=value1 var2=value2 ...

DESCRIPTION

TemplateTest.pl is a utility for development of Embperl based templates for the Penguin Greetings web-based greeting cards system. It can be used to test a template page for correct Embperl syntax and for correct appearance given particular parameters. It can launch your favorite browser so that the page under development can be viewed under realistic conditions. It can also be used to dump the state of transfer variables to a given template page.


PREREQUISITES

TemplateTest.pl requires the standard Penguin Greeting environment in order to function. The only module it uses that is not included in Perl 5.8.0 is Embperl. It is convenient to edit the Perl source file to change the default paths to your pgreet.conf and cards.conf file so that it isn't necessary to specify this each time on the command line. To take advantage of the view page in browser option, you must edit the path to your browser and set the file prefix. See the top of the TemplateTest.pl file for more details. The path to store temporary files is /tmp/pgreet/TemplateTest. This can also be changed to suit local environments.


USAGE

TemplateTest.pl performs two tasks. When used with the -d option it can be used to display all the state variables passed to a template page. Otherwise it can be used to process a given template with Embperl and view the resulting pure HTML. In order to allow the developer to set the value of state variables that are unique to their pages, variable, value pairs can be passed to the program separated by an equals sign =. So for example, to process the file MyTemplate.tpl.html with the variable penguin equal to 5 and the variable camel equal to 2_hump the command would be:

    TemplateTest.pl MyTemplate.tpl.html penguin=5 camel=2_hump

Variables or values should be quotes as necessary to avoid being misinterpreted by your command shell. Normally, TemplateTest.pl displays the dumped variables or the resulting HTML to standard out. If you use the -b option, it will instead save the rendered HTML to a temporary file and launch a browser so that you may view the resulting page. There are 4 command line options explained below:

-b = Render the template into an HTML page, save as a temporary file, and launch a browser to view the resulting page. In order for this to work you must set the variables: $browser, $prefix, and $tmp_path to appropriate values for your system.

-c path_to/cards.conf = Use the specified file instead of the default file for the Penguin Greetings cards.conf card configuration file.

-d = Do not render any template page, just dump what the state variables for this arrangement would be. The -d option will ignore any template filename and process only command line arguments with embedded equals signs as additional state variables.

-p path_to/pgreet.conf = Use the specified file instead of the default file for the Penguin Greetings pgreet.conf general configuration file.


COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2003 Edouard Lagache

This software is released under the GNU General Public License, Version 2. For more information, see the COPYING file included with this software or visit: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html


BUGS

There is no mechanism to clean up the temp files created in the -b option. There is simply no reliably way of knowing when a user will be finished with a given temporary file. Perhaps pgreetd.pl will eventually be assigned the task of garbage collection.

When using the -d option, no template file should be specified. This is because there is no rendering needed when dumping the state variables. While this is a user interface inconsistency, it seemed more prudent to respect the programmers need for laziness than consistency! :-)


AUTHOR

Edouard Lagache <pgreetdev@canebas.org>


VERSION

0.8.3