Act's templates

Act provides a set of classes that encapsulate Template Toolkit's functionality. The base class is Act::Template, a subclass of Template to which it adds:

• automatic INCLUDE_PATH configuration

  A template's INCLUDE_PATH is the list of directories where TT searches for template files. When a new template is created (Act::Template->new), the INCLUDE_PATH is set according to current configuration and request: first any conference specific paths, if the current request is within a given conference, then the global template directories. This allows overriding global templates on a case by case basis.

• template object caching

  Act::Template->new acts as an object factory: it maintains an internal cache of template objects. This avoids the overhead associated with template object creation and leverages TT's internal compiled templates cache.

• multilingual templates

  Multiple versions of the same text can be included in a given template, using an XML-like syntax:

  <t>...</t<> surrounds a multilingual text section. <xx>...</xx> surrounds a particular language version, where xx is a language code. Here's an example:

    <t><fr>Bonjour</fr><en>Hello</en></t>

  These language sections are parsed when TT compiles the template, and therefore have no impact on TT's compiled templates cache. At request time, Act::Template will process the appropriate language section according to the current request language.

• easier variable setting

  This is a convenience method. $template->variables() will accumulate template variable settings until template processing time.

• default output

  When no output argument is provided, Act::Template::process outputs to $Request{r}, which if in a web context will be the client's browser. Thus in the general case process() is called with a single argument, the template's filename.

Act::Template::HTML is a subclass of Act::Template which adds the following features:

• automatic HTML escaping of template variables: &, <, > are converted to HTML entities &amp; &lt; and &gt;. This works on nested data structures as well.