Re: DBI and HTML::Template

[Anonymous Monk]

HTML::Template->param expects an array reference of hash references. So you would need to create a structure like this

$myarrayref = [ 
   { NAME => 'Bob' , JOB => 'Programmer'} ,
   { NAME => 'Bill' , JOB => 'Manager'} ,
];

and use it like this.

$template->param( EMPLOYEE_INFO => $myarrayref);

To do this using DBI you would want to do something like the following. First fetch each row as a hash reference then push each one of these onto a array reference. Note: you will need to dereference the array reference hence the @$myarrayref.

# Create statement handle
$sth = $dbh->prepare($somesql);

# execute statement handle
$sth->execute();

# loop through rows
while ($hashref = $sth->fethrow_hashref()) {
   push @$myarrayref , $hashref;
}

# clean up statement handle
$sth->finish();

Once you have the array reference of hash references you can pass this to the param method of HTML::Template like so.

$template->param(EMPLOYEE_INFO => $myarrayref);

[chipmunk]

# loop through rows
while ($hashref = $sth->fethrow_hashref()) {
   push @$myarrayref , $hashref;
}

Be aware that the documentation for DBI specifically forbids using fetchrow_hashref in that way:

Currently, a new hash reference is returned for each row. This will change in the future to return the same hash ref each time, so don't rely on the current behaviour.

Although your code will work with existing versions of DBI, in some future version it will break with every reference in the array pointing to the same hash, containing the last row fetched. Instead, you should make sure to create a new hash for each row:

# loop through rows
while ($hashref = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()) {
   push @$myarrayref , { %$hashref };
}

There's also fetchall_arrayref, as lachoy explained.