NAME

HTMLUtils - a module for useful HTML utilities for Genex DBs

SYNOPSIS

  use HTMLUtils;

  %new_hash = post_process(%args);

  $html_string = objs2table(HEADER=>1, CGI=>$cgi, OBJECTS=>\@obj_list);

DESCRIPTION

Methods for transforming information from a GeneX DB into HTML.

FUNCTIONS

post_process($cgi,%args)

Begin to post-process information from a Genex table before writing it to an HTML table. In order to write HTML we use CGI.pm, so any calling routine must pass in the current CGI object.

Currently, post_process() handles the following tasks:

• Lookup foreign key values from the appropriate table.

• Change the output of fkeys to be hyperlinks to the cgi script for that table type.

• Modify URLs and email addresses to be active hyperlinks.

• Filter out sensitive information such as login names and passwords.

For example, after generating a Genex object, we can create a hyperlinked HTML table output for that object by doing the following:

    # we need a CGI object
    my $q = new CGI;

    my $object = Bio::Genex::Species->new(id=>25);
    foreach (@{Bio::Genex::Species->column_names()}) {
      no strict 'refs';
      $tmp_values{$_} = $object->$_;
    }

    # call post_process() to HTML'ize the values
    %tmp_values = post_process($q,%tmp_values);

    # make a header that's human readable
    my @rows;
    my @keys = keys %{Bio::Genex::Species->column2name()};
    my @values = values %{Bio::Genex::Species->column2name()};
    push(@rows,td([@values]));  

    # add the data in the same order of the header
    push(@rows,td([@tmp_values{@keys}]));       

    # now contstruct the table, 
    print $q->html_start("Information for Species: $object->primary_scientific_name");
    print $q->table({-border=>''},
                    Tr(\@rows)  # Tr() distributes over an array reference
                   );
    print $q->html_end();

objs2table(HEADER=>1, CGI=>$cgi, OBJECTS=>\@obj_list)

Returns an HTML string encoding the list of objects as an HTML table rows using the $cgi object. Each attribute will be printed out as a separate column for each object. Before printing the value for each object the data will be fed through post_process().

The 'HEADER' parameter pair is optional and specifies that a human readable header row should be included as the first row of the table output.

NOTE: The returned string must still be wrapped by a $cgi->table() function call. This is so that the application can pass optional parameters to the table call.

CAUTION: it is assumed that all the objects in @obj_list are of the same class.

AUTHOR

Jason Stewart (jes@ncgr.org)

SEE ALSO

perl(1).