Pod::Simple::HTML

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3perl)
Updated: 2019-04-20
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NAME

Pod::Simple::HTML - convert Pod to HTML

SYNOPSIS

  perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go thingy.pod

DESCRIPTION

This class is for making an HTML rendering of a Pod document.

This is a subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParser and inherits all its methods (and options).

Note that if you want to do a batch conversion of a lot of Pod documents to HTML, you should see the module Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch.

CALLING FROM THE COMMAND LINE

TODO

  perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go Thing.pod Thing.html

CALLING FROM PERL

Minimal code

  use Pod::Simple::HTML;
  my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;
  $p->output_string(\my $html);
  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
  open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die "Cannot open 'out.html': $!\n";
  print $out $html;

More detailed example

  use Pod::Simple::HTML;

Set the content type:

  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};

  my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;

Include a single javascript source:

  $p->html_javascript('http://abc.com/a.js');

Or insert multiple javascript source in the header (or for that matter include anything, thought this is not recommended)

  $p->html_javascript('
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/b.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/c.js"></script>');

Include a single css source in the header:

  $p->html_css('/style.css');

or insert multiple css sources:

  $p->html_css('
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="http://remote.server.com/jquery.css">
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="/style.css">');

Tell the parser where should the output go. In this case it will be placed in the $html variable:

  my $html;
  $p->output_string(\$html);

Parse and process a file with pod in it:

  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');

METHODS

TODO all (most?) accessorized methods

The following variables need to be set before the call to the ->new constructor.

Set the string that is included before the opening <html> tag:

  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Doctype_decl = qq{<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
         "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">\n};

Set the content-type in the HTML head: (defaults to ISO-8859-1)

  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};

Set the value that will be embedded in the opening tags of F, C tags and verbatim text. F maps to <em>, C maps to <code>, Verbatim text maps to <pre> (Computerese defaults to "")

  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Computerese =  ' class="some_class_name';

html_css

html_javascript

title_prefix

title_postfix

html_header_before_title

This includes everything before the <title> opening tag including the Document type and including the opening <title> tag. The following call will set it to be a simple HTML file:

  $p->html_header_before_title('<html><head><title>');

top_anchor

By default Pod::Simple::HTML adds a dummy anchor at the top of the HTML. You can change it by calling

  $p->top_anchor('<a name="zz" >');

html_h_level

Normally =head1 will become <h1>, =head2 will become <h2> etc. Using the html_h_level method will change these levels setting the h level of =head1 tags:

  $p->html_h_level(3);

Will make sure that =head1 will become <h3> and =head2 will become <h4> etc...

index

Set it to some true value if you want to have an index (in reality a table of contents) to be added at the top of the generated HTML.

  $p->index(1);

html_header_after_title

Includes the closing tag of </title> and through the rest of the head till the opening of the body

  $p->html_header_after_title('</title>...</head><body id="my_id">');

html_footer

The very end of the document:

  $p->html_footer( qq[\n<!-- end doc -->\n\n</body></html>\n] );

SUBCLASSING

Can use any of the methods described above but for further customization one needs to override some of the methods:

  package My::Pod;
  use strict;
  use warnings;

  use base 'Pod::Simple::HTML';

  # needs to return a URL string such
  # http://some.other.com/page.html
  # #anchor_in_the_same_file
  # /internal/ref.html
  sub do_pod_link {
    # My::Pod object and Pod::Simple::PullParserStartToken object
    my ($self, $link) = @_;

    say $link->tagname;          # will be L for links
    say $link->attr('to');       # 
    say $link->attr('type');     # will be 'pod' always
    say $link->attr('section');

    # Links local to our web site
    if ($link->tagname eq 'L' and $link->attr('type') eq 'pod') {
      my $to = $link->attr('to');
      if ($to =~ /^Padre::/) {
          $to =~ s{::}{/}g;
          return "/docs/Padre/$to.html";
      }
    }

    # all other links are generated by the parent class
    my $ret = $self->SUPER::do_pod_link($link);
    return $ret;
  }

  1;

Meanwhile in script.pl:

  use My::Pod;

  my $p = My::Pod->new;

  my $html;
  $p->output_string(\$html);
  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
  open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die;
  print $out $html;

TODO

maybe override do_beginning do_end

SUPPORT

Questions or discussion about POD and Pod::Simple should be sent to the pod-people@perl.org mail list. Send an empty email to pod-people-subscribe@perl.org to subscribe.

This module is managed in an open GitHub repository, <https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple/>. Feel free to fork and contribute, or to clone <git://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple.git> and send patches!

Patches against Pod::Simple are welcome. Please send bug reports to <bug-pod-simple@rt.cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMERS

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

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Hurricane Electric <http://he.net/> for permission to use its Linux man pages online <http://man.he.net/> site for man page links.

Thanks to search.cpan.org <http://search.cpan.org/> for permission to use the site for Perl module links.

AUTHOR

Pod::Simple was created by Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>. But don't bother him, he's retired.

Pod::Simple is maintained by:

•: Allison Randal "allison@perl.org"
•: Hans Dieter Pearcey "hdp@cpan.org"
•: David E. Wheeler "dwheeler@cpan.org"