NAME

HTML::Menu::Select - Create HTML for select menus to simplify your templates.

SYNOPSIS

  use HTML::Menu::Select qw( menu options );
  
  my $html = menu(
    name   => 'myMenu',
    values => [ 'yes', 'no' ],
  );
  
  $tmpl->param( select_menu => $html );

DESCRIPTION

This modules creates HTML for form select items.

Traditionally, if you wanted to dynamically generate a list of options in a select menu, you would either have to use CGI's HTML generation routines, or use a complicated template such as this:

  <select name="day">
  <TMPL_LOOP day>
          <option value="<TMPL_VAR value>" <TMPL_VAR selected>>
            <TMPL_VAR label>
          </option>
        </TMPL_LOOP>
  </select>

This module allows you to quickly prototype a page, allowing the CGI to completely generate the HTML, while allowing you at a later stage to easily change how much HTML it generates.

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

Alternatively, to install with Module::Build, you can use the following commands:

  perl Build.PL
  ./Build
  ./Build test
  ./Build install

METHODS

`menu()`

Use menu() to generate the entire HTML for a select menu.

This allows you to have a very simple template tag, such as:

  <TMPL_VAR select_menu>

menu() accepts the following parameters:

name

This is used in the select tag's name="" attribute.

The name value will be run through escapeHTML(), see HTML escaping.

values

This is an array-ref of values used for each of the option tags.

The values will be run through escapeHTML, see HTML escaping.

default

This selects which (if any) option tag should have a selected="selected" attribute.

labels

This is a hash-ref of values to provide different values for the user-visible label of each option tag. Each key should match a value provided by the values parameter.

If this parameter is not provided, or for any value which doesn't have a matching key here, the user-visible label will be the option's value.

  print menu(
    values => [1, 2],
    labels => {
      1 => 'one'},
      2 => 'two'},
    },
  );
  
  # will output
  
  <select name="">
  <option name="1">one</option>
  <option name="2">two</option>
  </select>

The labels will be run through escapeHTML, see HTML escaping.

attributes

This is a hash-ref of values to provide extra HTML attributes for the option tags. Like the labels parameter, the keys should match a value provided by the c<values> parameter.

Each value of this hash-ref should be a hash-ref representing the name and value of a HTML attribute.

  print menu(
    values     => ['one', 'two'],
    attributes => {
      one => {onSubmit => 'do(this);'},
      two => {style => 'color: #000;'},
    },
  );
  
  # will output
  
  <select name="">
  <option onSubmit="do(this);" name="one">one</option>
  <option style="color: #000;" name="two">two</option>
  </select>

All attribute values (but not the attribute name) will be run through escapeHTML, see HTML escaping.

value

An alias for value.

defaults

An alias for default.

All parameters are optional, though it doesn't make much sense to not provide anything for values.

Any unrecognised parameters will be used to provide extra HTML attributes for the select tag. For example:

  print menu(
    id       => 'myID',
    values   => ['one'],
    onChange => 'do(this);',
  );
  
  # will output
  
  <select name="" id="myID" onChange="do(this);">
  <option name="one">one</option>
  </select>

All attribute values (but not the attribute name) will be run through escapeHTML, see HTML escaping.

Use options() to generate the HTML for only the option tags, allowing you to keep the outer select tag in the template, so that, for example, a designer can easily make changes to the CSS or JavaScript handlers.

You would have something like the following in your template:

  <select name="day">
    <TMPL_VAR menu_options>
  </select>

options() accepts the same parameters as menu(), but the name parameter is ignored.

`popup_menu()`

popup_menu() is an alias for menu() for those familiar with CGI.

HTML escaping

If any of the following modules are already loaded into memory, their own escapeHTML (or equivalent) method will be used

CGI
CGI::Simple
HTML::Entities
Apache::Util

Otherwise the following characters will be escaped

  & < > "

CGI.pm COMPATABILITY

Arguments may be passed as a hash-reference, rather than a hash.

This allows compile time checking, rather than runtime.

  popup_menu( name => $name );
  
  # OR
  popup_menu( {name => $name} );

Arguments to the menu(), options() and popup_menu() functions are similar to CGI.pm's, excepting the following differences.

Named arguments should not have a leading dash

  popup_menu( name => $name );
  
  # NOT
  # popup_menu( -name => $name );

Positional arguments are not supported

  popup_menu( name => $name, labels => \@labels );
  
  # NOT
  # popup_menu( $name, \@labels );

Attribute names not lowercased

An argument to CGI.pm's popup_menu such as -onChange = 'check()'> will output the HTML onchange="check()".

This module will retain the case, outputting onChange="check()".

The optgroup function is not yet supported

SUPPORT / BUGS

Please log bugs, feature requests and patch submissions at http://sourceforge.net/projects/html-menu.

Support mailing list: html-menu-users@lists.sourceforge.net

AUTHOR

Carl Franks <cpan@fireartist.com>

CREDITS

  Ron Savage

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Licenses are in the files ``Artistic'' and ``Copying'' in this distribution.