NAME

       HTML::PullParser - Alternative HTML::Parser interface

SYNOPSIS

        use HTML::PullParser;

        $p = HTML::PullParser->new(file => "index.html",
                                   start => 'event, tagname, @attr',
                                   end   => 'event, tagname',
                                   ignore_elements => [qw(script style)],
                                  ) || die "Can't open: $!";
        while (my $token = $p->get_token) {
            #...do something with $token
        }

DESCRIPTION

       The HTML::PullParser is an alternative interface to the HTML::Parser class.  It basically
       turns the HTML::Parser inside out.  You associate a file (or any IO::Handle object or
       string) with the parser at construction time and then repeatedly call $parser->get_token
       to obtain the tags and text found in the parsed document.

       The following methods are provided:

       $p = HTML::PullParser->new( file => $file, %options )
       $p = HTML::PullParser->new( doc => \$doc, %options )
           A "HTML::PullParser" can be made to parse from either a file or a literal document
           based on whether the "file" or "doc" option is passed to the parser's constructor.

           The "file" passed in can either be a file name or a file handle object.  If a file
           name is passed, and it can't be opened for reading, then the constructor will return
           an undefined value and $!  will tell you why it failed.  Otherwise the argument is
           taken to be some object that the "HTML::PullParser" can read() from when it needs more
           data.  The stream will be read() until EOF, but not closed.

           A "doc" can be passed plain or as a reference to a scalar.  If a reference is passed
           then the value of this scalar should not be changed before all tokens have been
           extracted.

           Next the information to be returned for the different token types must be set up.
           This is done by simply associating an argspec (as defined in HTML::Parser) with the
           events you have an interest in.  For instance, if you want "start" tokens to be
           reported as the string 'S' followed by the tagname and the attributes you might pass
           an "start"-option like this:

              $p = HTML::PullParser->new(
                     doc   => $document_to_parse,
                     start => '"S", tagname, @attr',
                     end   => '"E", tagname',
                   );

           At last other "HTML::Parser" options, like "ignore_tags", and "unbroken_text", can be
           passed in.  Note that you should not use the event_h options to set up parser
           handlers.  That would confuse the inner logic of "HTML::PullParser".

       $token = $p->get_token
           This method will return the next token found in the HTML document, or "undef" at the
           end of the document.  The token is returned as an array reference.  The content of
           this array match the argspec set up during "HTML::PullParser" construction.

       $p->unget_token( @tokens )
           If you find out you have read too many tokens you can push them back, so that they are
           returned again the next time $p->get_token is called.

EXAMPLES

       The 'eg/hform' script shows how we might parse the form section of HTML::Documents using
       HTML::PullParser.

SEE ALSO

       HTML::Parser, HTML::TokeParser

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1998-2001 Gisle Aas.

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