phpMan > info > HTML::FillInForm

HTML::FillInForm(3pm) User Contributed Perl DocumentationHTML::FillInForm(3pm)

NAME
       HTML::FillInForm - Populates HTML Forms with data.

VERSION
       version 2.22

SYNOPSIS
       Fill HTML form with data.

         $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \$html,   $q );
         $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \@html,   [$q1,$q2] );
         $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( \*HTML,   \%data );
         $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill( 't.html', [\%data1,%data2] );

       The HTML can be provided as a scalarref, arrayref, filehandle or file.
       The data can come from one or more hashrefs, or objects which support a
       param() method, like CGI.pm, Apache::Request, etc.

DESCRIPTION
       This module fills in an HTML form with data from a Perl data structure,
       allowing you to keep the HTML and Perl separate.

       Here are two common use cases:

       1. A user submits an HTML form without filling out a required field.
       You want to redisplay the form with all the previous data in it, to
       make it easy for the user to see and correct the error.

       2. You have just retrieved a record from a database and need to display
       it in an HTML form.

fill
       The basic syntax is seen above the Synopsis. There are a few additional
       options.

   Options
       target => 'form1'

       Suppose you have multiple forms in a html file and only want to fill in
       one.

         $output = HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, $q, target => 'form1');

       This will fill in only the form inside

         <FORM name="form1"> ... </FORM>

       fill_password => 0

       Passwords are filled in by default. To disable:

         fill_password => 0

       ignore_fields => []

       To disable the filling of some fields:

           ignore_fields => ['prev','next']

       disable_fields => []

       To disable fields from being edited:

           disable_fields => [ 'uid', 'gid' ]

       invalid_fields => []

       To mark fields as being invalid (CSS class set to "invalid" or whatever
       you set invalid_class to):

           invalid_fields => [ 'uid', 'gid' ]

       invalid_class => "invalid"

       The CSS class which will be used to mark fields invalid.  Defaults to
       "invalid".

       clear_absent_checkboxes => 0

       Absent fields are not cleared or in any way changed. This is not what
       you want when you deal with checkboxes which are not sent by browser at
       all when cleared by user.

       To remove "checked" attribute from checkboxes and radio buttons and
       attribute "selected" from options of select lists for which there's no
       data:

           clear_absent_checkboxes => 1

   File Upload fields
       File upload fields cannot be supported directly. Workarounds include
       asking the user to re-attach any file uploads or fancy server-side
       storage and referencing. You are on your own.

   Clearing Fields
       Fields are cleared if you set their value to an empty string or empty
       arrayref but not undef:

         # this will leave the form element foo untouched
         HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, { foo => undef });

         # this will set clear the form element foo
         HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, { foo => "" });

       It has been suggested to add a option to change the behavior so that
       undef values will clear the form elements.  Patches welcome.

       You can also use "clear_absent_checkboxes" option to clear checkboxes,
       radio buttons and selects without corresponding keys in the data:

           # this will set clear the form element foo (and all others except
           # bar)
           HTML::FillInForm->fill(\$html, { bar => 123 },
               clear_absent_checkboxes => 1);

Old syntax
       You probably need to read no further. The remaining docs concern the
       1.x era syntax, which is still supported.

   new
       Call "new()" to create a new FillInForm object:

         $fif = HTML::FillInForm->new;
         $fif->fill(...);

       In theory, there is a slight performance benefit to calling "new()"
       before "fill()" if you make multiple calls to "fill()" before you
       destroy the object. Benchmark before optimizing.

   fill ( old syntax )
       Instead of having your HTML and data types auto-detected, you can
       declare them explicitly in your call to "fill()":

       HTML source options:

           arrayref  => @html
           scalarref => $html
           file      => \*HTML
           file      => 't.html'

       Fill Data options:

           fobject   => $data_obj  # with param() method
           fdat      => \%data

       Additional methods are also available:

           fill_file(\*HTML,...);
           fill_file('t.html',...);
           fill_arrayref(\@html,...);
           fill_scalarref(\$html,...);

USING AN ALTERNATE PARSER
       It's possible to use an alternate parser to HTML::Parser if the
       alternate provides a sufficiently compatible interface. For example,
       when a Pure Perl implementation of HTML::Parser appears, it could be
       used for portability. The syntax is simply to provide a "parser_class"
       to new();

          HTML::FillInForm->new( parser_class => 'MyAlternate::Parser' );

CALLING FROM OTHER MODULES
   Apache::PageKit
       To use HTML::FillInForm in Apache::PageKit is easy.   It is
       automatically called for any page that includes a <form> tag.  It can
       be turned on or off by using the "fill_in_form" configuration option.

   Apache::ASP v2.09 and above
       HTML::FillInForm is now integrated with Apache::ASP.  To activate, use

         PerlSetVar FormFill 1
         $Response->{FormFill} = 1

   HTML::Mason
       Using HTML::FillInForm from HTML::Mason is covered in the FAQ on the
       masonhq.com website at
       <http://www.masonhq.com/?FAQ:HTTPAndHTML#h-how_can_i_populate_form_values_automatically_>

SECURITY
       Note that you might want to think about caching issues if you have
       password fields on your page.  There is a discussion of this issue at

       http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=70482

       In summary, some browsers will cache the output of CGI scripts, and you
       can control this by setting the Expires header.  For example, use
       "-expires" in CGI.pm or set "browser_cache" to no in Config.xml file of
       Apache::PageKit.

TRANSLATION
       Kato Atsushi has translated these docs into Japanese, available from

       http://perldoc.jp

BUGS
       Please submit any bug reports to tjmather AT maxmind.com.

NOTES
       Requires Perl 5.005 and HTML::Parser version 3.26.

       I wrote this module because I wanted to be able to insert CGI data into
       HTML forms, but without combining the HTML and Perl code.  CGI.pm and
       Embperl allow you so insert CGI data into forms, but require that you
       mix HTML with Perl.

       There is a nice review of the module available here:
       <http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=274534>

SEE ALSO
       HTML::Parser, Data::FormValidator, HTML::Template, Apache::PageKit

CREDITS
       Fixes, Bug Reports, Docs have been generously provided by:

         Alex Kapranoff                Miika Pekkarinen
         Michael Fisher                Sam Tregar
         Tatsuhiko Miyagawa            Joseph Yanni
         Boris Zentner                 Philip Mak
         Dave Rolsky                   Jost Krieger
         Patrick Michael Kane          Gabriel Burka
         Ade Olonoh                    Bill Moseley
         Tom Lancaster                 James Tolley
         Martin H Sluka                Dan Kubb
         Mark Stosberg                 Alexander Hartmaier
         Jonathan Swartz               Paul Miller
         Trevor Schellhorn             Anthony Ettinger
         Jim Miner                     Simon P. Ditner
         Paul Lindner                  Michael Peters
         Maurice Aubrey                Trevor Schellhorn
         Andrew Creer

       Thanks!

AUTHOR
       TJ Mather, tjmather AT maxmind.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       This software is copyright (c) 2000 by TJ Mather, tjmather AT maxmind.com.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
       the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

perl v5.32.1                      2021-09-29             HTML::FillInForm(3pm)