This plugin provides a simple facility to construct a list of hash
references, each of which represents a data record of known structure,
from a data file.
[% USE datafile(filename) %]
A absolute filename must be specified (for this initial implementation at
least - in a future version it might also use the INCLUDE_PATH). An
optional 'delim' parameter may also be provided to specify an alternate
delimiter character.
[% USE userlist = datafile('/path/to/file/users') %]
[% USE things = datafile('items', delim = '|') %]
The format of the file is intentionally simple. The first line
defines the field names, delimited by colons with optional surrounding
whitespace. Subsequent lines then defines records containing data
items, also delimited by colons. e.g.
id : name : email : tel
abw : Andy Wardley : [email protected] : 555-1234
neilb : Neil Bowers : [email protected] : 555-9876
Each line is read, split into composite fields, and then used to
initialise a hash array containing the field names as relevant keys.
The plugin returns a blessed list reference containing the hash
references in the order as defined in the file.
[% FOREACH user = userlist %]
[% user.id %]: [% user.name %]
[% END %]
The first line of the file must contain the field definitions.
After the first line, blank lines will be ignored, along with comment
line which start with a '#'.
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