Macro.PL

Macro.PL is a Perl script for automated generation of static web pages. Formatting information can be placed in a global template file to be used over a potentially large set of HTML pages. Information exported from databases can be used to generate large sites or frequently updated information displays.

Macro.PL performs recursive macro expansion in files. Simple macro calls are inserted into the HTML source code with the form __MACRONAME__ - where MACRONAME can be any name consisting of letters/digits and the minus sign. The contents of the macro is defined in the macro definition file or in the database table. Macros may also have arguments, e.g. __MACRONAME__("argument text" __SECONDARG__) - where the first argument is a constant text and the second is another macro call.

Macro definition file:
A macro definition starts with the macro name on the first line, definitions can consist of multiple lines, separated by empty lines. Simple form:

__MACRONAME__
this is the replacement text

Macro with arguments:

__MACRONAME__
argument one is __1__ and arg two is __2__ and so on

Macro call:
Macro names are case sensitive. simple form:

some other text __MACRONAME__ some other text

Macro with space separated arguments:

__MACRONAME__(argument1 argument2 ... )

All files in the source directory will be processed. One set of files in the target directory will be generated for each occurence of the trigger argument __EVAL__ in the macro definition file. The file names for the output files are generated by appending the contents of the __NAME__ macro to the source file name (extension remains unchanged), e.g. file.html with __NAME__=one will become fileone.html

If option -t databasefile is given a tab separated tabular text database file is used in addition to the macro definition file, one set of output files for each row of the table. Field delimiters " may be used for multiline field contents (escape with ""). The first line of the table is read for the macro names (macro names are built by enclosing the names with __ symbols), e.g.

NAME field1 field3
myname text1 text2

If option -c categoryfield[:filenamefield] is given in addition to option -t a single input file is used to generate category files. A category is a consecutive number of rows where the contents of the category field is the same. One output file is generated for each category. The output file name is either a 4 digit number starting with 0001 plus .html or the contents of the file name field (if specified) The input file consists of header, loop, and footer part. While header and footer parts will only be used once for each category the loop part will be used once for each table row. The loop part is defined to be between two lines containing __LOOP__ and __ENDLOOP__, e.g.

__LOOP__
this is a loop text
__ENDLOOP__

This allows categorized tabular information to be converted into HTML

If option -i fieldname:fieldtext is given in addition to option -t a table row is only processed if the table field fieldname equals fieldtext.

If option -f folderfield is given the ouput files are written to a directory named with the contents of folderfield.

Option -v enables verbose error reporting - including non-existent macros.

Usage:
macro.pl [-t database] [-c category[:name]] [-i field:text] [-f field] [-v] macrofile source targetdir

Examples: