[Perl-widget-developer] Widget and templates - QED - stringify overloading

[<ja...@la...>]

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

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