CGI::Ex::Fill(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation CGI::Ex::Fill(3)NAMECGI::Ex::Fill - Fast but compliant regex based form filler
SYNOPSIS
use CGI::Ex::Fill qw(form_fill fill);
my $text = my_own_template_from_somewhere();
my $form = CGI->new;
# OR
# my $form = {key => 'value'}
# OR
# my $form = [CGI->new, CGI->new, {key1 => 'val1'}, CGI->new];
form_fill(\$text, $form); # modifies $text
# OR
# my $copy = form_fill($text, $form); # copies $text
# OR
fill({
text => \$text,
form => $form,
});
# ALSO
my $formname = 'formname'; # form to parse (undef = anytable)
my $fp = 0; # fill_passwords ? default is true
my $ignore = ['key1', 'key2']; # OR {key1 => 1, key2 => 1};
form_fill(\$text, $form, $formname, $fp, $ignore);
# OR
fill({
text => \$text,
form => $form,
target => 'my_formname',
fill_password => $fp,
ignore_fields => $ignore,
});
# ALSO
### delay getting the value until we find an element that needs it
my $form = {key => sub {my $key = shift; # get and return value}};
DESCRIPTION
form_fill is directly comparable to HTML::FillInForm. It will pass the
same suite of tests (actually - it is a little bit kinder on the parse
as it won't change case, reorder your attributes, or alter
miscellaneous spaces and it won't require the HTML to be well formed).
HTML::FillInForm is based upon HTML::Parser while CGI::Ex::Fill is
purely regex driven. The performance of CGI::Ex::Fill will be better
on HTML with many markup tags because HTML::Parser will parse each tag
while CGI::Ex::Fill will search only for those tags it knows how to
handle. And CGI::Ex::Fill generally won't break on malformed html.
On tiny forms (< 1 k) form_fill was ~ 13% slower than FillInForm. If
the html document incorporated very many entities at all, the
performance of FillInForm goes down (adding 360 <br> tags pushed
form_fill to ~ 350% faster). However, if you are only filling in one
form every so often, then it shouldn't matter which you use - but
form_fill will be nicer on the tags and won't balk at ugly html and
will decrease performance only at a slow rate as the size of the html
increases. See the benchmarks in the t/samples/bench_cgix_hfif.pl file
for more information (ALL BENCHMARKS SHOULD BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF
SALT).
There are two functions, fill and form_fill. The function fill takes a
hashref of named arguments. The function form_fill takes a list of
positional parameters.
ARGUMENTS TO form_fill
The following are the arguments to the main function "fill".
text
A reference to an html string that includes one or more forms.
form
A form hash, CGI object, or an array of hashrefs and objects.
target
The name of the form to swap. Default is undef which means to swap
all form entities in all forms.
fill_password
Default true. If set to false, fields of type password will not be
refilled.
ignore_fields
Hashref of fields to be ignored from swapping.
remove_script
Defaults to the package global $REMOVE_SCRIPT which defaults to
true. Removes anything in <script></script> tags which often cause
problems for parsers.
remove_comment
Defaults to the package global $REMOVE_COMMENT which defaults to
true. Removes anything in <!-- --> tags which can sometimes cause
problems for parsers.
object_method
The method to call on objects passed to the form argument. Default
value is the package global $OBJECT_METHOD which defaults to
'param'. If a CGI object is passed, it would call param on that
object passing the desired keyname as an argument.
ARGUMENTS TO form_fill
The following are the arguments to the legacy function "form_fill".
"\$html"
A reference to an html string that includes one or more forms or
form entities.
"\%FORM"
A form hash, or CGI query object, or an arrayref of multiple hash
refs and/or CGI query objects that will supply values for the form.
$form_name
The name of the form to fill in values for. The default is undef
which indicates that all forms are to be filled in.
$swap_pass
Default true. Indicates that "<lt"input type="password"<gt>>
fields are to be swapped as well. Set to false to disable this
behavior.
"\%IGNORE_FIELDS" OR "\@IGNORE_FIELDS"
A hash ref of key names or an array ref of key names that will be
ignored during the fill in of the form.
BEHAVIOR
fill and form_fill will attempt to DWYM when filling in values. The
following behaviors are used on the following types of form elements.
"<input type="text">"
The following rules are used when matching this type:
1) Get the value from the form that matches the input's "name".
2) If the value is defined - it adds or replaces the existing value.
3) If the value is not defined and the existing value is not defined,
a value of "" is added.
For example:
my $form = {foo => "FOO", bar => "BAR", baz => "BAZ"};
my $html = '
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=bar value="">
<input type=text name=baz value="Something else">
<input type=text name=hem value="Another thing">
<input type=text name=haw>
';
form_fill(\$html, $form);
$html eq '
<input type=text name=foo value="FOO">
<input type=text name=foo value="FOO">
<input type=text name=bar value="BAR">
<input type=text name=baz value="BAZ">
<input type=text name=hem value="Another thing">
<input type=text name=haw value="">
';
If the value returned from the form is an array ref, the values of
the array ref will be sequentially used for each input found by
that name until the values run out. If the value is not an array
ref - it will be used to fill in any values by that name. For
example:
$form = {foo => ['aaaa', 'bbbb', 'cccc']};
$html = '
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=foo>
<input type=text name=foo>
';
form_fill(\$html, $form);
$html eq '
<input type=text name=foo value="aaaa">
<input type=text name=foo value="bbbb">
<input type=text name=foo value="cccc">
<input type=text name=foo value="">
<input type=text name=foo value="">
';
"<input type="hidden">"
Same as "<input type="text">".
"<input type="password">"
Same as "<input type="text">".
"<input type="file">"
Same as "<input type="text">". (Note - this is subject to browser
support for pre-population)
"<input type="checkbox">"
As each checkbox is found the following rules are applied:
1) Get the values from the form (do nothing if no values found)
2) Remove any existing "checked=checked" or "checked" markup from the tag.
3) Compare the "value" field to the values and mark with checked="checked"
if there is a match.
If no "value" field is found in the html, a default value of "on"
will be used (which is what most browsers will send as the default
value for checked boxes without "value" fields).
$form = {foo => 'FOO', bar => ['aaaa', 'bbbb', 'cccc'], baz => 'on'};
$html = '
<input type=checkbox name=foo value="123">
<input type=checkbox name=foo value="FOO">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="aaaa">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="cccc">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="dddd" checked="checked">
<input type=checkbox name=baz>
';
form_fill(\$html, $form);
$html eq '
<input type=checkbox name=foo value="123">
<input type=checkbox name=foo value="FOO" checked="checked">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="aaaa" checked="checked">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="cccc" checked="checked">
<input type=checkbox name=bar value="dddd">
<input type=checkbox name=baz checked="checked">
';
"<input type="radio">"
Same as "<input type="checkbox">".
"<select>"
As each select box is found the following rules are applied (these
rules are applied regardless of if the box is a select-one or a
select-multi - if multiple values are selected on a select-one it
is up to the browser to choose which one to highlight):
1) Get the values from the form (do nothing if no values found)
2) Remove any existing "selected=selected" or "selected" markup from the tag.
3) Compare the "value" field to the values and mark with selected="selected"
if there is a match.
4) If there is no "value" field - use the text in between the "option" tags.
(Note: There does not need to be a closing "select" tag or closing "option" tag)
$form = {foo => 'FOO', bar => ['aaaa', 'bbbb', 'cccc']};
$html = '
<select name=foo><option>FOO<option>123<br>
<select name=bar>
<option>aaaa</option>
<option value="cccc">cccc</option>
<option value="dddd" selected="selected">dddd</option>
</select>
';
form_fill(\$html, $form);
ok(
$html eq '
<select name=foo><option selected="selected">FOO<option>123<br>
<select name=bar>
<option selected="selected">aaaa</option>
<option value="cccc" selected="selected">cccc</option>
<option value="dddd">dddd</option>
</select>
', "Perldoc example 4 passed");
"<textarea>"
The rules for swapping textarea are as follows:
1) Get the value from the form that matches the textarea's "name".
2) If the value is defined - it adds or replaces the existing value.
3) If the value is not defined, the text area is left alone.
(Note - there does not need to be a closing textarea tag. In the case of
a missing close textarea tag, the contents of the text area will be
assumed to be the start of the next textarea of the end of the document -
which ever comes sooner)
If the form returned an array ref of values, then these values will
be used sequentially each time a textarea by that name is found.
If a single value (not array ref) is found, that value will be used
for each textarea by that name.
For example.
$form = {foo => 'FOO', bar => ['aaaa', 'bbbb']};
$html = '
<textarea name=foo></textarea>
<textarea name=foo></textarea>
<textarea name=bar>
<textarea name=bar></textarea><br>
<textarea name=bar>dddd</textarea><br>
<textarea name=bar><br><br>
';
form_fill(\$html, $form);
$html eq '
<textarea name=foo>FOO</textarea>
<textarea name=foo>FOO</textarea>
<textarea name=bar>aaaa<textarea name=bar>bbbb</textarea><br>
<textarea name=bar></textarea><br>
<textarea name=bar>';
"<input type="submit">"
Does nothing. The value for submit should typically be set by the
templating system or application system.
"<input type="button">"
Same as submit.
HTML COMMENT / JAVASCRIPT
Because there are too many problems that could occur with html comments
and javascript, form_fill temporarily removes them during the fill.
You may disable this behavior by setting $REMOVE_COMMENT and
$REMOVE_SCRIPT to 0 before calling form_fill. The main reason for
doing this would be if you wanted to have form elements inside the
javascript and comments get filled. Disabling the removal only results
in a speed increase of 5%. The function uses \0COMMENT\0 and \0SCRIPT\0
as placeholders so it would be good to avoid these in your text
(Actually they may be reset to whatever you'd like via $MARKER_COMMENT
and $MARKER_SCRIPT).
UTILITY FUNCTIONS
"html_escape"
Very minimal entity escaper for filled in values.
my $escaped = html_escape($unescaped);
html_escape(\$text_to_escape);
"get_tagval_by_key"
Get a named value for from an html tag (key="value" pairs).
my $val = get_tagval_by_key(\$tag, $key);
my $valsref = get_tagval_by_key(\$tag, $key, 'all'); # get all values
"swap_tagval_by_key"
Swap out values in an html tag (key="value" pairs).
my $count = swap_tagval_by_key(\$tag, $key, $val); # modify ref
my $newtag = swap_tagval_by_key($tag, $key, $val); # copies tag
LICENSE
This module may distributed under the same terms as Perl itself.
AUTHOR
Paul Seamons <perl at seamons dot com>
perl v5.14.1 2010-02-25 CGI::Ex::Fill(3)
