NAME
Pod::Simple::PullParser -- a pull-parser interface to parsing Pod
SYNOPSIS
my $parser = SomePodProcessor->new; $parser->set_source( "whatever.pod" ); $parser->run;
Or:
my $parser = SomePodProcessor->new; $parser->set_source( $some_filehandle_object ); $parser->run;
Or:
my $parser = SomePodProcessor->new; $parser->set_source( \$document_source ); $parser->run;
Or:
my $parser = SomePodProcessor->new; $parser->set_source( \@document_lines ); $parser->run;
And elsewhere:
require 5; package SomePodProcessor; use strict; use base qw(Pod::Simple::PullParser);
sub run { my $self = shift; Token: while(my $token = $self->get_token) { ...process each token... } }
DESCRIPTION
This class is for using Pod::Simple to build a Pod processor -- but one that uses an interface based on a stream of token objects, instead of based on events.
This is a subclass of Pod::Simple and inherits all its methods.
A subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParser should define a run
method
that calls $token = $parser->get_token
to pull tokens.
See the source for Pod::Simple::RTF for an example of a formatter that uses Pod::Simple::PullParser.
METHODS
- my $token = $parser->get_token
This returns the next token object (which will be of a subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParserToken), or undef if the parser-stream has hit the end of the document.
- $parser->unget_token( $token )
- $parser->unget_token( $token1, $token2, ... )
This restores the token object(s) to the front of the parser stream.
The source has to be set before you can parse anything. The lowest-level
way is to call set_source
:
- $parser->set_source( $filename )
- $parser->set_source( $filehandle_object )
- $parser->set_source( \$document_source )
- $parser->set_source( \@document_lines )
Or you can call these methods, which Pod::Simple::PullParser has defined to work just like Pod::Simple's same-named methods:
- $parser->parse_file(...)
- $parser->parse_string_document(...)
- $parser->filter(...)
- $parser->parse_from_file(...)
For those to work, the Pod-processing subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParser has to have defined a $parser->run method -- so it is advised that all Pod::Simple::PullParser subclasses do so. See the Synopsis above, or the source for Pod::Simple::RTF.
Authors of formatter subclasses might find these methods useful to call on a parser object that you haven't started pulling tokens from yet:
- my $title_string = $parser->get_title
This tries to get the title string out of $parser, by getting some tokens, and scanning them for the title, and then ungetting them so that you can process the token-stream from the beginning.
For example, suppose you have a document that starts out:
=head1 NAME
Hoo::Boy::Wowza -- Stuff B<wow> yeah!
$parser->get_title on that document will return "Hoo::Boy::Wowza -- Stuff wow yeah!".
In cases where get_title can't find the title, it will return empty-string ("").
- my $title_string = $parser->get_short_title
This is just like get_title, except that it returns just the modulename, if the title seems to be of the form "SomeModuleName -- description".
For example, suppose you have a document that starts out:
=head1 NAME
Hoo::Boy::Wowza -- Stuff B<wow> yeah!
then $parser->get_short_title on that document will return "Hoo::Boy::Wowza".
But if the document starts out:
=head1 NAME
Hooboy, stuff B<wow> yeah!
then $parser->get_short_title on that document will return "Hooboy, stuff wow yeah!".
If the title can't be found, then get_short_title returns empty-string ("").
- $author_name = $parser->get_author
This works like get_title except that it returns the contents of the "=head1 AUTHOR\n\nParagraph...\n" section, assuming that that section isn't terribly long.
(This method tolerates "AUTHORS" instead of "AUTHOR" too.)
- $description_name = $parser->get_description
This works like get_title except that it returns the contents of the "=head1 PARAGRAPH\n\nParagraph...\n" section, assuming that that section isn't terribly long.
- $version_block = $parser->get_version
This works like get_title except that it returns the contents of the "=head1 VERSION\n\n[BIG BLOCK]\n" block. Note that this does NOT return the module's
$VERSION
!!
NOTE
You don't actually have to define a run
method. If you're
writing a Pod-formatter class, you should define a run
just so
that users can call parse_file
etc, but you don't have to.
And if you're not writing a formatter class, but are instead just
writing a program that does something simple with a Pod::PullParser
object (and not an object of a subclass), then there's no reason to
bother subclassing to add a run
method.
SEE ALSO
Pod::Simple::PullParserToken -- and its subclasses Pod::Simple::PullParserStartToken, Pod::Simple::PullParserTextToken, and Pod::Simple::PullParserEndToken.
HTML::TokeParser, which inspired this.
COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMERS
Copyright (c) 2002 Sean M. Burke. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
AUTHOR
Sean M. Burke sburke@cpan.org