Build a Perl RSS Aggregator with Templating Tools

Loops

If we're going to get anywhere with our RSS example, we'll need to loop over a series of items--the stories in our newsreel. Thankfully, HTML::Template provides the <TMPL_LOOP> pseudotag for treating a variable as an array. For instance, the following code:

  <ul>
  <TMPL_LOOP NAME=STORIES>
      <li> From <TMPL_VAR NAME=FEED_NAME>: <TMPL_VAR NAME=STORY_NAME> </li>
  </TMPL_LOOP>
  </ul>

when provided the appropriate data structure, loops over the items in the STORIES array reference and produces output like so:

  <ul>

      <li>

From Slashdot: NASA Finds Monkeys on Mars </li>

 

      <li>

From use.perl: Perl 6 Release Predicted for 2013 </li>

  </ul>

The trick is that the array reference needs to contain an array of hashes, and each hash provides the appropriate variable names:

  $template->param(STORIES => [
   { FEED_NAME => "Slashdot", STORY_NAME => "NASA Finds Monkeys on Mars" },
   { FEED_NAME => "use.perl", STORY_NAME => "Perl 6 Release Predicted for 2013" }
  ]);