NAME

       HTML::TagCloud - Generate An HTML Tag Cloud

SYNOPSIS

         # A cloud with tags that link to other web pages.
         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
         $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1);
         $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2);
         $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3);
         my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

         # A cloud with tags that do not link to other web pages.
         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
         $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1);
         $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2);
         $cloud->add_static($tag3, $count3);
         my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

         # A cloud that is comprised of tags in multiple categories.
         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
         $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1, $category1);
         $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2, $category2);
         $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3, $category3);
         my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

         # The same cloud without tags that link to other web pages.
         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
         $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1, $category1);
         $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2, $category2);
         $cloud->add_static($tag3, $count3, $category3);
         my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

         # Obtaining uncategorized HTML for a categorized tag cloud.
         my $html = $cloud->html_without_categories();

         # Explicitly requesting categorized HTML.
         my $html = $cloud->html_with_categories();

DESCRIPTION

       The HTML::TagCloud module enables you to generate "tag clouds" in HTML. Tag clouds serve
       as a textual way to visualize terms and topics that are used most frequently. The tags are
       sorted alphabetically and a larger font is used to indicate more frequent term usage.

       Example sites with tag clouds: <http://www.43things.com/>,
       <http://www.astray.com/recipes/> and <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/>.

       This module provides a simple interface to generating a CSS-based HTML tag cloud. You
       simply pass in a set of tags, their URL and their count.  This module outputs stylesheet-
       based HTML. You may use the included CSS or use your own.

CONSTRUCTOR

   new
       The constructor takes a few optional arguments:

         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(levels=>10);

       if not provided, levels defaults to 24

         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(distinguish_adjacent_tags=>1);

       If distinguish_adjacent_tags is true HTML::TagCloud will use different CSS classes for
       adjacent tags in order to be able to make it easier to distinguish adjacent multi-word
       tags.  If not specified, this parameter defaults to a false value.

         my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(categories=>\@categories);

       If categories are provided then tags are grouped in separate divisions by category when
       the HTML fragment is generated.

METHODS

   add
       This module adds a tag into the cloud. You pass in the tag name, its URL and its count:

         $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1);
         $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2);
         $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3);

   add_static
       This module adds a tag that does not link to another web page into the cloud.  You pass in
       the tag name and its count:

         $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1);
         $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2);

   tags($limit)
       Returns a list of hashrefs representing each tag in the cloud, sorted by alphabet. Each
       tag has the following keys: name, count, url and level.

   css
       This returns the CSS that will format the HTML returned by the html() method with tags
       which have a high count as larger:

         my $css  = $cloud->css;

   html($limit)
       This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS (you should use both css() and
       html() or simply the html_and_css() method). If any categories were specified when items
       were being placed in the cloud then the tags will be organized into divisions by category
       name.  If a limit is provided, only the top $limit tags are in the cloud, otherwise all
       the tags are in the cloud:

         my $html = $cloud->html(200);

   html_with_categories($limit)
       This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS.  The tags will be arranged
       into divisions by category.  If a limit is provided, only the top $limit tags are in the
       cloud.  Otherwise, all tags are in the cloud.

   html_without_categories($limit)
       This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS.  The tags will not be grouped
       by category if this method is used to generate the HTML.

   html_and_css($limit)
       This returns the tag cloud as HTML with embedded CSS. If a limit is provided, only the top
       $limit tags are in the cloud, otherwise all the tags are in the cloud:

         my $html_and_css = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

AUTHOR

       Leon Brocard, "<acme@astray.com>".

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2005-6, Leon Brocard

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