Embperl - building dynamic websites with Perl

• Subroutines
• Execute
• Creating Component Libraries

 (Embperl 1.2 or above)

It is better to write subroutines than to keep placing repetitive pieces of code in your program many times. You can do this with Embperl too. As an example, if you have text input fields with labels, this may work better for you:

 [$ sub textinput $]
    [- ($label, $name) = @_ -]
    [+ $label +]<input type=text name=[+ $name +]>
 [$ endsub $]

 <form>
    [- textinput ('Last Name', 'lname')  -]<p>
    [- textinput ('First Name', 'fname') -]<p>
 </form>

The sub metacommand starts the subroutine and the parameters are passed in the array @_. You can do anything in the subroutine that you would normally be able to do inside normal Embperl pages. Embperl lets you call this subroutine just like any other Perl subroutine: just write its name and, if necessary, the parameter list.

If you are working on an entire site rather than just a few pages, you are well aware that there are always elements which occur in every page or across many pages. Instead of copying the source code to every page, you can include other Embperl pages in your page - so you have to write the source only once. Such an included page could be a header, a footer, a navigation bar, and so on. Embperl is not only capable of including such partial pages, you can also pass arguments - for example, to tell the navigation bar which of its own element to highlight:

 Example for a simple navigation bar

 [- @buttons = ('Index', 'Infos', 'Search') -]
 <table><tr><td>
     [$if $buttons[$col] eq $param[0]$] <bold> [$endif$]
     <a href="[+ $buttons[$col] +].html"> [+ $buttons[$col] +] </a>
     [$if $buttons[$col] eq $param[0]$] </bold> [$endif$]
 </td></tr></table>
 <hr>

Now if you are on the "Info" page you can include the navigation bar this way:

 [- Execute ('navbar.html', 'Infos') -]

This will include the navigation bar, which is stored in the file navbar.html, and pass as its first parameter the string 'Infos'. The navigation bar module itself uses a dynamic table to display one column - which contains the text and a link - for every item in the array @buttons. The text which matches that which is passed as the first parameter is displayed in bold. There is also a long form of the Execute call, which allows you to control all of the details of how the called page is executed.

Instead of creating a single file for every piece of HTML-code you wish to include, you can pack them together in just one library. To do this, split up every piece of code you want to include separately in one Embperl subroutine (sub-metacommand). Now, you can use the import parameter of the Execute function to import all of the subrountines defined in one file, into the namespace of the current page. Afterwards, you are able to call them just like any other Perl subroutine.

Moreover, if you wish to have some systemwide Embperl subroutines, you can put all the Embperl code in a normal Perl module (a foo.pm file), install it into your Perl system (or a private library path), and use it just like any other Perl module - just by saying

  use mymodule;