NAME

       Template::Plugin::Datafile - Plugin to construct records from a simple data file

SYNOPSIS

           [% USE mydata = datafile('/path/to/datafile') %]
           [% USE mydata = datafile('/path/to/datafile', delim = '|') %]

           [% FOREACH record = mydata %]
              [% record.this %]  [% record.that %]
           [% END %]

DESCRIPTION

       This plugin provides a simple facility to construct a list of hash references, each of
       which represents a data record of known structure, from a data file.

           [% USE datafile(filename) %]

       A absolute filename must be specified (for this initial implementation at least - in a
       future version it might also use the "INCLUDE_PATH").  An optional "delim" parameter may
       also be provided to specify an alternate delimiter character.

           [% USE userlist = datafile('/path/to/file/users')     %]
           [% USE things   = datafile('items', delim = '|') %]

       The format of the file is intentionally simple.  The first line defines the field names,
       delimited by colons with optional surrounding whitespace.  Subsequent lines then defines
       records containing data items, also delimited by colons.  e.g.

           id : name : email : tel
           abw : Andy Wardley : abw@tt2.org : 555-1234
           sam : Simon Matthews : sam@tt2.org : 555-9876

       Each line is read, split into composite fields, and then used to initialise a hash array
       containing the field names as relevant keys.  The plugin returns a blessed list reference
       containing the hash references in the order as defined in the file.

           [% FOREACH user = userlist %]
              [% user.id %]: [% user.name %]
           [% END %]

       The first line of the file must contain the field definitions.  After the first line,
       blank lines will be ignored, along with comment line which start with a '"#"'.

BUGS

       Should handle file names relative to "INCLUDE_PATH".  Doesn't permit use of '":"' in a
       field.  Some escaping mechanism is required.

AUTHOR

       Andy Wardley <abw@wardley.org> <http://wardley.org/>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 1996-2007 Andy Wardley.  All Rights Reserved.

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

SEE ALSO

       Template::Plugin