HTML::...tTable(3pm)

💖 HTML::ElementTable 💖

okay bestie, so this is HTML::ElementTable — a Perl user-contributed manual page (that's the 3pm part, iykyk), and it's literally a Perl extension for manipulating a table composed of HTML::Element style components. tables but make it structural, we love to see it. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

HTML::ElementTable — a Perl extension for manipulating a table composed of HTML::Element style components. periodt. 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

like, just look at her:

use HTML::ElementTable;
# Create a table 0..10 x 0..12
$t = new HTML::ElementTable maxrow => 10, maxcol => 12;

# Populate cells with coordinates
$t->table->push_position;

# Manipulate <TABLE> tag
$t->attr('cellspacing',0);
$t->attr('border',1);
$t->attr('bgcolor','#DDBB00');

# Manipulate entire table - optimize on <TR> or pass to all <TD>
$t->table->attr('align','left');
$t->table->attr('valign','top');

# Manipulate rows (optimizes on <TR> if possible)
$t->row(0,2,4,6)->attr('bgcolor','#9999FF');

# Manipulate columns (all go to <TD> tags within column)
$t->col(0,4,8,12)->attr('bgcolor','#BBFFBB');

# Manipulate boxes (all go to <TD> elements
# unless it contains full rows, then <TR>)
$t->box(7,1 => 10,3)->attr('bgcolor','magenta');
$t->box(7,7 => 10,5)->attr('bgcolor','magenta');
$t->box(8,9 => 9,11)->attr('bgcolor','magenta');
$t->box(7,10 => 10,10)->attr('bgcolor','magenta');

# individual <TD> or <TH> attributes
$t->cell(8,6)->attr('bgcolor','#FFAAAA');
$t->cell(9,6)->attr('bgcolor','#FFAAAA');
$t->cell(7,9, 10,9, 7,11, 10,11)->attr('bgcolor','#FFAAAA');

# Take a look
print $t->as_HTML;

no notes. iconic. 💅

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

So HTML::ElementTable gives you a highly enhanced HTML::ElementSuper structure — like, glow-up of the century — with methods designed to easily manipulate table elements by using coordinates. 🫶

Elements can be manipulated in bulk by individual cells, arbitrary groupings of cells, boxes, columns, rows, or the entire table. pick your fighter, bestie. 👑

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🔥 PUBLIC METHODS 🔥

Table coordinates start at 0,0 in the upper left cell. obsessed with a clean origin. ✨

🎀 CONSTRUCTORS 🎀

• new()
• new(maxrow => row, maxcol => col) — Return a new HTML::ElementTable object. If the number of rows and columns were provided, all elements required for the rows and columns will be initialized as well. See extent().
• new_from_tree($tree) — Takes an existing top-level HTML::Element representing a table and converts the entire table structure into a cohesive HTML::ElementTable construct. (this is potentially useful if you want to use the power of this module for editing HTML tables in situ within an HTML::Element tree). literally upgrading your table's whole situation. 💫

🦋 TABLE CONFIGURATION 🦋

• extent()
• extent(maxrow, maxcolumn) — Set or return the extent of the current table. The maxrow and maxcolumn parameters indicate the maximum row and column coordinates you desire in the table. These are the coordinates of the lower right cell in the table, starting from (0,0) at the upper left.

⚠️ Providing a smaller extent than the current one will shrink the table with no ill effect, provided you do not mind losing the information in the clipped cells. bestie the cells are GONE. clipped. no warning. so be normal about it. 😭

• maxrow() — Set or return the coordinate of the last row.
• maxcol() — Set or return the coordinate of the last column.

🌈 ELEMENT ACCESS 🌈

Unless accessing a single element, most table element access is accomplished through globs, which are collections of elements that behave as if they were a single element object. it's giving squad goals. 💕

Whenever possible, globbed operations are optimized into the most appropriate element. For example, if you set an attribute for a row glob, the attribute will be set either on the <TR> element or the collected <TD> elements, whichever is appropriate. efficiency queen. ✨

See HTML::ElementGlob(3) for more information on element globs.

• cell(row,col,[row2,col2],[...]) — Access an individual cell or collection of cells by their coordinates.
• row(row,[row2,...]) — Access the contents of a row or collection of rows by row coordinate.
• col(col,[col2,...]) — Access the contents of a column or collection of columns by column coordinate.
• box(row_a1,col_a1,row_a2,col_a2,[row_b1,col_b1,row_b2,col_b2],[...]) — Access the contents of a span of cells, specified as a box consisting of two sets of coordinates. Multiple boxes can be specified. multi-box erasure, we love her. 🍓
• table() — Access all cells in the table. This is different from manipulating the table object itself, which is reserved for such things as CELLSPACING and other attributes specific to the <TABLE> tag. However, since table() returns a glob of cells, if the attribute is more appropriate for the top level <TABLE> tag, it will be placed there rather than in each <TR> tag or every <TD> tag. she knows where she belongs. 👑

💅 ELEMENT/GLOB METHODS 💅

The interfaces to a single table element or a glob of elements are identical. All methods available from the HTML::ElementSuper class are also available to a table element or glob of elements. See HTML::ElementSuper(3) for details on these methods.

Briefly, here are some of the more useful methods provided by HTML::ElementSuper:

• attr()
• push_content()
• replace_content()
• wrap_content()
• clone([element])
• mask([mode])

a lil sampler platter, menu's bigger tho. 💖

🧚 TABLE SPECIFIC EXTENSIONS 🧚

• blank_fill([mode]) — Set or return the current fill mode for blank cells. The default is 0 for HTML::Element::Table elements.

When most browsers render tables, if they are empty you will get a box the color of your browser background color rather than the BGCOLOR of that cell. When enabled, empty cells are provided with an ' ', or invisible content, which will trigger the rendering of the BGCOLOR for that cell. the empty cell finally getting her color moment. 😌✨

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💀 NOTES ON GLOBS 💀

Globbing was a convenient way to treat arbitrary collections of table cells as if they were a single HTML element. Methods are generally passed blindly and sequentially to the elements they contain. no thoughts, head empty, just forwarding. 🙈

Most of the time, this is fairly intuitive, such as when you are setting the attributes of the cells.

Other times, it might be problematic, such as with push_content(). Do you push the same object to all of the cells? HTML::Element based classes only support one parent, so this breaks if you try to push the same element into multiple parental hopefuls. In the specific case of push_content() on globs, the elements that eventually get pushed are clones of the originally provided content. It works, but it is not necessarily what you expect. An incestuous HTML element tree is probably not what you want anyway. 💀💀💀

See HTML::ElementGlob(3) for more details on how globs work.

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🌟 REQUIRES 🌟

HTML::ElementSuper, HTML::ElementGlob

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Matthew P. Sisk, <sisk@mojotoad.com>

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🫶 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🫶

Thanks to William R. Ward for some conceptual nudging. credit where credit is due, king. 🌈

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⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Matthew P. Sisk. All rights reserved. All wrongs revenged. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

"all wrongs revenged" is honestly the most metal thing in this entire doc. 🔥

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

A useful page of HTML::ElementTable examples can be found at http://www.mojotoad.com/sisk/projects/HTML-Element-Extended/examples.html.

HTML::ElementSuper(3), HTML::ElementGlob(3), HTML::Element(3), HTML::TableExtract(3), perl(1).

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and that's the whole page bestie, no cap 💖✨

this was perl v5.40.1, dated 2025-03-27 — shoutout to the User Contributed Perl Documentation for hosting her, she ate and left no crumbs. 💅🎀🦋