Thanks marto,
I've had a look at the module and also File::Find::Recurse.
The issue is, how do I structure the directories in the form of a tree?

Here's what I need to identify:
The main directory (done)
All the subdirectories for the main directory (done)
Each subdirectory's subdirectories (confusing, but doable)
..recuresively (uh..uh)
and then, put it all in one data structure, wherein I can identify specific points where I can start and end the  <li> and the <ul>tags.

Thanks,
Rupesh.

Hi rupesh,

"Each subdirectory's subdirectories (confusing, but doable)
..recuresively (uh..uh)"

Are you having difficulty doing this recursively?
As a little example look at this code below:


#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;
my $TargetPath = $ARGV[0];
find (\&ProcessTree,$TargetPath); 

sub ProcessTree
{
print "Directory: $File::Find::name\n" if -d;
print "File: $File::Find::name\n" unless -d;
}
[download]


Call this script with the path you want to traverse as an argument.
Are you planning on using the HTML::Template module?
I hope the above example has given you an idea of how to tackle this.
Let me know how you get on.

Martin

I've always stuck with File::Find and never really got involved into its fancy variants. I think you can print some opening tags as a preprocess action and some closing one at postprocess time. Check the documentation: there may be alternative ways, but this should be easy enough to be left as an exercise to the reader...

As I understand it, the question is how to parse that listing into an appropriate html structure to render it as a nested set of unordered lists. This should be fairly simple, given that the input list is already sorted as shown in your example:

use strict;

# let's assume you read the list from stdin:

my @paths = <>;
chomp @paths;
s/:$// for @paths;  # don't want the punctuation

my $prev_path = shift @paths;
my $prev_depth = ( $prev_path =~ tr{/}{/} ); # count /'s
my $indent = 1;
print "<UL>\n  <LI> $prev_path: </LI>\n";

for ( @paths )
{
    my $depth_now = ( tr{/}{/} );

    if ( index( $_, "$prev_path/" ) == 0 )
    {   # $prev_path is contained within this one, so indent
        print '  ' x $indent, "<UL>\n";
        $indent++;
    }
    elsif ( $depth_now < $prev_depth )
    {   # need to back off the indentation
        while ( $depth_now < $prev_depth ) {
            $indent--;
            print '  ' x $indent, "</UL>\n";
            $prev_depth--;
        }
    }
    print '  ' x $indent, "<LI> $_: </LI>\n";  # put ":" back in
    $prev_path = $_;
    $prev_depth = $depth_now;
}
while ( $indent ) {
    $indent--;
    print '  ' x $indent, "</UL>\n";
}

__OUTPUT__
<UL>
  <LI> examples/html: </LI>
  <UL>
    <LI> examples/html/bars: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/headers: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/links: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/lists: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/menus: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/rgb: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/tables: </LI>
  </UL>
  <LI> examples/ps: </LI>
  <UL>
    <LI> examples/ps/marks: </LI>
  </UL>
  <LI> examples/splash: </LI>
  <UL>
    <LI> examples/splash/dropbox: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/frame: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/hair: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/icon: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/menu: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/menubar: </LI>
  </UL>
</UL>
[download]

graff, Thanks.

It's just what I wanted.

Sad, though, that you can do a "++" only once. ;).

Cheers,
Rupesh.

graff,

I know that this is almost 4 years later, but I see a problem with the output of the code. It would cause several HTML validation errors.

If you please look at your output at <LI> examples/html: </LI>. The </li> needs to be down after </ul> after <LI> examples/html/tables: </LI> since the indented unordered list is within the above list item.

I have tried fixing it and will keep trying in the meantime, but so far I have had only a little success.

<ul>
  <li>Foo level 1
    <ul>
      <li>Foo level 2
        <ul>
          <li>Bar</li>
          <li>Baz</li>
        </ul>
      </li> #This closes Foo level 2      
      <li>Qux</li>
      <li>Quux</li>
    </ul>
  </li> #This closes Foo level 1
  <li>Widget</li>
</ul>
[download]

Have a nice day!
Lady Aleena

Lady Aleena,

Nice to hear from you again. What particular method are you using for html validation? (That is, who says that <ul>...</ul> positioned between </li>...<li> is invalid?) UPDATE: almut's reply clears this up -- I'm wrong, and the markup I posted above is Not Good™.

I'm somewhat skeptical that the output I posted above constitutes an error in html syntax. Despite knowing that this markup is invalid, it may be worth pointing out that I stuck it into a file surrounded by <html>...</html> and loaded it into Safari and Firefox, and they both render it as I would expect (i.e. as intended). So in that sense at least, it works.

Having said that, I'll acknowledge that the following layout for the markup also works, and I can well imagine that one or another validator might it has been shown that html validators should insist on this version (even though I don't see it as a necessary condition it seems to work either way):

<UL>
  <LI> examples/html:
   <UL>
    <LI> examples/html/bars: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/headers: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/links: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/lists: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/menus: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/rgb: </LI>
    <LI> examples/html/tables: </LI>
   </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI> examples/ps:
   <UL>
    <LI> examples/ps/marks: </LI>
   </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI> examples/splash:
   <UL>
    <LI> examples/splash/dropbox: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/frame: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/hair: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/icon: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/menu: </LI>
    <LI> examples/splash/menubar: </LI>
   </UL>
  </LI>
</UL>
[download]

If you are having trouble getting the code to output this pattern, show the code you have so far, and we'll see what's up with that.

File::Find is the obvious thing for getting the data. When you have the data in some structure, you'll print them with HTML::Template.

JavaScript and CSS go to the template-file along with some HTML and HTML::Templates "meta tags".

The documentation is really easy and full of useful examples.

Hi

This is one example of using recursion to solve it.

use strict;

my $path = '/var/www/html';
print "<ul>\n";
recurse_path($path, "  ");
print "</ul>\n";

sub recurse_path {
  my $path = shift;
  my $padding = shift;

  my $dir = $path;
  $dir =~ s/.*\///g;
  print "$padding<li><a href=\"$path\">$dir</a>\n";

  my $has_subdir = 0;
  foreach(glob("$path/*")) {
    if(-d $_ && ! $has_subdir) {
      print "$padding<ul>\n";
      $has_subdir = 1;
      recurse_path($_, $padding . "  ")
    }
    elsif(-d $_) { recurse_path($_, $padding . "  ") }
  }
  if($has_subdir) { print "$padding</ul>\n" }
}
[download]

Hello mickep76,

I know it's been a few months since you posted this, but I just saw it. FYI, you aren't closing the list items (</li>). I would give it a shot, but your recursion is confusing me a bit.

Have a nice day!
Lady Aleena

Upgrade File::Spec