There were a couple of good points about my proposed how to use widgets in Templating systems. I know the thought of changing a system like Template Toolkit is unattractive. In the long run I feel a few strategic changes could make all lives easier.
HOWEVER - GET THIS:
I thought to myself if we do something like:
$widget=[ a widget instance ];
print $widget;
We get a lovely output like:
Widget::HTML::Thinggy=HASH(0x80903040)
Using the overload (perldoc overload) package we can simply overload the stringify operator to whatever we wish:
Pacakge Widget::HTML::Thinggy;
sub render_html {
}
use overload '""' => \&render_html; # or *whatever*
Now print $widget will actually call render_html to create what to print. Delicious.
I can rip out the funky code I whacked into Template Toolkit and still just place my widget where I want, calling it by name and seeing its default rendering (HTML) in all its glory.
We should look at putting this into the Widget::HTML::Base.pm package.
I see that right we're waffling with what to call - render, print, display, whatever...
package Widget::HTML::Base;
# Default rendering - shows the bad news
sub render {
my $self=shift;
return "no html rendering for this widget.";
}
use overload '""' => \&render; # Does this inherit properly? Maybe not. Might need a bit of fancy footwork for subclasses to Widget::HTML::Base
1;
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