HTML::Formatter(3)

NAME
HTML::Formatter - Base class for HTML formatters

VERSION
version 2.16

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 <https://pause.perl.org/> 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

SUPPORT

  Bugs / Feature Requests
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTML-Formatter>. You will be notified automatically of any progress on your issue.

  Source Code
This is open source software. The code repository is available for public review and contribution under the terms of the license.

<https://github.com/nigelm/html-formatter>

  git clone https://github.com/nigelm/html-formatter.git

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) 2016 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.