NAME

    HTML::Formatter - Base class for HTML formatters

VERSION

    version 2.14

SYNOPSIS

      use HTML::FormatSomething;
      my $infile  = "whatever.html";
      my $outfile = "whatever.file";
      open OUT, ">$outfile"
       or die "Can't write-open $outfile: $!\n";
    
      print OUT HTML::FormatSomething->format_file(
        $infile,
          'option1' => 'value1',
          'option2' => 'value2',
          ...
      );
      close(OUT);

DESCRIPTION

    HTML::Formatter is a base class for classes that take HTML and format
    it to some output format. When you take an object of such a base class
    and call $formatter-format( $tree )> with an HTML::TreeBuilder (or
    HTML::Element) object, they return the appropriately formatted string
    for the input HTML.

    HTML formatters are able to format a HTML syntax tree into various
    printable formats. Different formatters produce output for different
    output media. Common for all formatters are that they will return the
    formatted output when the format() method is called. The format()
    method takes a HTML::Element object (usually the HTML::TreeBuilder root
    object) as parameter.

    The distribution name has been changed to HTML-Formatter as detailed in
    "DISTRIBUTION NAME"

METHODS

 new

        my $formatter = FormatterClass->new(
            option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
        );

    This creates a new formatter object with the given options.

 format_file

 format_from_file

        $string = FormatterClass->format_file(
            $html_source,
            option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
            );

    Return a string consisting of the result of using the given class to
    format the given HTML file according to the given (optional) options.
    Internally it calls SomeClass->new( ... )->format( ... ) on a new
    HTML::TreeBuilder object based on the given HTML file.

 format_string

 format_from_string

        $string = FormatterClass->format_string(
            $html_source,
            option1 => value1, option2 => value2, ...
            );

    Return a string consisting of the result of using the given class to
    format the given HTML source according to the given (optional) options.
    Internally it calls SomeClass->new( ... )->format( ... ) on a new
    HTML::TreeBuilder object based on the given source.

 format

        my $render_string = $formatter->format( $html_tree_object );

    This renders the given HTML object according to the options set for
    $formatter.

    After you've used a particular formatter object to format a particular
    HTML tree object, you probably should not use either again.

DISTRIBUTION NAME

    This module was originally named HTML-Format despite not containing a
    HTML::Format module within it. As rules on naming have been taken more
    seriously, and the PAUSE <https://pause.perl.org/> toolchain adapted so
    that getting the distribution indexed was more difficult, it became
    obvious that I should rename the distribution to HTML-Formatter
    matching the base HTML::Formatter module.

    As of release 2.13 this is released as the HTML-Formatter distribution
    with corresponding changes to the git repository name and associated
    items.

    Due to the way that the module is put together this should have no
    effect on code using the module. The only issues will be where the
    distribution name was used within dependancies.

SEE ALSO

    The three specific formatters:-

    HTML::FormatText

      Format HTML into plain text

    HTML::FormatPS

      Format HTML into postscript

    HTML::FormatRTF

      Format HTML into Rich Text Format

    Also the HTML manipulation libraries used - HTML::TreeBuilder,
    HTML::Element and HTML::Tree

INSTALLATION

    See perlmodinstall for information and options on installing Perl
    modules.

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

    You can make new bug reports, and view existing ones, through the web
    interface at
    http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTML-Formatter.

AVAILABILITY

    The project homepage is https://metacpan.org/release/HTML-Formatter.

    The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive
    Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a
    CPAN site near you, or see
    https://metacpan.org/module/HTML::Formatter/.

AUTHORS

      * Nigel Metheringham <nigelm@cpan.org>

      * Sean M Burke <sburke@cpan.org>

      * Gisle Aas <gisle@ActiveState.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

    This software is copyright (c) 2015 by Nigel Metheringham, 2002-2005
    Sean M Burke, 1999-2002 Gisle Aas.

    This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
    the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.