POD::SIMPLE::HTML(3perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 14 versions
, in arch rolling

🌸 NAME 🌸

Pod::Simple::HTML — it converts Pod to HTML. that's the vibe. that's the whole assignment. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go thingy.pod

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so bestie, this class is literally for making an HTML rendering of a Pod document. that's its whole thing 🎀

it's a subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParser, which means it inherits all of that class's methods (and options) — every single one, no gatekeeping 🫶

ngl one important heads-up: if what you actually want is to do a batch conversion of a LOT of Pod documents to HTML, you should go look at the module Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch instead. this class is for one-at-a-time energy ✨

💻 CALLING FROM THE COMMAND LINE 💻

TODO

perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go Thing.pod Thing.html

🧚 CALLING FROM PERL 🧚

Minimal code

use Pod::Simple::HTML;
my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;
$p->output_string(\my $html);
$p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die "Cannot open 'out.html': $!\n";
print $out $html;

More detailed example

use Pod::Simple::HTML;

set the content type:

$Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};

my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;

include a single javascript source:

$p->html_javascript('http://abc.com/a.js');

or insert multiple javascript source in the header (or for that matter include anything, thought this is not recommended):

$p->html_javascript('
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/b.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/c.js"></script>');

include a single css source in the header:

$p->html_css('/style.css');

or insert multiple css sources:

$p->html_css('
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="http://remote.server.com/jquery.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="/style.css">');

tell the parser where should the output go. in this case it will be placed in the $html variable:

my $html;
$p->output_string(\$html);

parse and process a file with pod in it:

$p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');

🔥 METHODS 🔥

TODO all (most?) accessorized methods

⚠️ real talk: the following variables need to be set before the call to the ->new constructor. before. not after. before 💀

set the string that is included before the opening <html> tag:

$Pod::Simple::HTML::Doctype_decl = qq{<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">\n};

set the content-type in the HTML head: (defaults to ISO-8859-1)

$Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};

set the value that will be embedded in the opening tags of F, C tags and verbatim text. F maps to <em>, C maps to <code>, Verbatim text maps to <pre> (Computerese defaults to "")

$Pod::Simple::HTML::Computerese =  ' class="some_class_name';

these next four are out here living their best life with no description attached, but they're part of the squad:

  • html_css
  • html_javascript
  • title_prefix
  • title_postfix

🌈 html_header_before_title 🌈

this includes everything before the <title> opening tag, including the Document type, and including the opening <title> tag itself. the following call will set it to be a simple HTML file:

$p->html_header_before_title('<html><head><title>');

🎀 top_anchor 🎀

by default Pod::Simple::HTML adds a dummy anchor at the top of the HTML. you can change it by calling:

$p->top_anchor('<a name="zz" >');

🦋 html_h_level 🦋

normally =head1 will become <h1>, =head2 will become <h2> etc. using the html_h_level method will change these levels, setting the h level of =head1 tags:

$p->html_h_level(3);

will make sure that =head1 will become <h3> and =head2 will become <h4> etc... slay 🔥

⭐ index ⭐

set it to some true value if you want to have an index (in reality a table of contents) to be added at the top of the generated HTML.

$p->index(1);

💜 html_header_after_title 💜

includes the closing tag of </title> and through the rest of the head till the opening of the body:

$p->html_header_after_title('</title>...</head><body id="my_id">');

the very end of the document:

$p->html_footer( qq[\n<!-- end doc -->\n\n</body></html>\n] );

👑 SUBCLASSING 👑

you can use any of the methods described above, but for further customization one needs to override some of the methods:

package My::Pod;
use strict;
use warnings;

use base 'Pod::Simple::HTML';

# needs to return a URL string such
# http://some.other.com/page.html
# #anchor_in_the_same_file
# /internal/ref.html
sub do_pod_link {
  # My::Pod object and Pod::Simple::PullParserStartToken object
  my ($self, $link) = @_;

  say $link->tagname;          # will be L for links
  say $link->attr('to');       #
  say $link->attr('type');     # will be 'pod' always
  say $link->attr('section');

  # Links local to our web site
  if ($link->tagname eq 'L' and $link->attr('type') eq 'pod') {
    my $to = $link->attr('to');
    if ($to =~ /^Padre::/) {
        $to =~ s{::}{/}g;
        return "/docs/Padre/$to.html";
    }
  }

  # all other links are generated by the parent class
  my $ret = $self->SUPER::do_pod_link($link);
  return $ret;
}

1;

meanwhile in script.pl:

use My::Pod;

my $p = My::Pod->new;

my $html;
$p->output_string(\$html);
$p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die;
print $out $html;

TODO

maybe override do_beginning do_end

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Pod::Simple, Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch

TODO: a corpus of sample Pod input and HTML output? Or common idioms?

🫶 SUPPORT 🫶

Questions or discussion about POD and Pod::Simple should be sent to the pod-people@perl.org mail list. send an empty email to pod-people-subscribe@perl.org to subscribe ✨

This module is managed in an open GitHub repository, https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple/. feel free to fork and contribute, or to clone https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple.git and send patches! 💅

patches against Pod::Simple are welcome. please send bug reports to bug-pod-simple@rt.cpan.org 🐛

Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Sean M. Burke.

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. (so like, no promises bestie 😭)

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

Pod::Simple was created by Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>. but don't bother him, he's retired 💀

Pod::Simple is maintained by:

  • Allison Randal "allison@perl.org"
  • Hans Dieter Pearcey "hdp@cpan.org"
  • David E. Wheeler "dwheeler@cpan.org"

okay that's the whole page, you're so welcome 💅 this was pulled from perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, and yeah the title got squished to Pod::S...e::HTML(3perl) because life is short and man page headers are dramatic 🎀 go forth and render some HTML, periodt ✨

📦 where this page comes from