Template Toolkit output to a scalar?

[theguvnor]

I'm looking for the easiest way to redirect the output from TT2's process() method to a scalar, as opposed to STDOUT. Suggestions? (I am trying to avoid having to shell out to use tpage, if possible.)

Update: I looked at the template docs manual and did not see that. --me! Anyway, thanks for the lightning fast responses - I now see it in the perldoc page.

[Tanktalus]

According to the Template docs, the third param to process can be a SCALAR ref - just pass in a ref to the variable you want to receive it.

[Ovid]

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use Template;

my $data = { name => 'Ovid' };
my $template = Template->new;
my $output;
$template->process(\*DATA, $data, \$output);
print $output;

__DATA__
Hello, [% name %]

[thor]

In general, you can open a scalar as though it were a file.

my $fake_file;
open(my $fh, ">", \$fake_file) or die $!;
print $fh, "foo\n";
print $fh, "bar\n";
print $fake_file;

According to perldoc -f open, you can do this with STDOUT, you just have to close it first.

[theguvnor]

Now *that* is cool. Definitely hadn't stumbled on that tidbit. ++thor

[merlyn]

Open-scalar-as-file is only in fairly recent Perls though (5.8 perhaps?). So if your code has to be portable (such as a CPAN submission), don't do that... yet.