The new() constructor creates and returns a reference to a new Template::Parser object.

A reference to a hash may be supplied as a parameter to provide configuration values. See CONFIGURATION OPTIONS below for a summary of these options and Template::Manual::Config for full details.

my $parser = Template::Parser->new({
    START_TAG => quotemeta('<+'),
    END_TAG   => quotemeta('+>'),
});

The parse() method parses the text passed in the first parameter and returns a reference to a hash array of data defining the compiled representation of the template text, suitable for passing to the Template::Document new() constructor method. On error, undef is returned.

$data = $parser->parse($text)
    || die $parser->error();

The $data hash reference returned contains a BLOCK item containing the compiled Perl code for the template, a DEFBLOCKS item containing a reference to a hash array of sub-template BLOCKs defined within in the template, and a METADATA item containing a reference to a hash array of metadata values defined in META tags.

The START_TAG and END_TAG options are used to specify character sequences or regular expressions that mark the start and end of a template directive.

my $parser = Template::Parser->new({ 
    START_TAG => quotemeta('<+'),
    END_TAG   => quotemeta('+>'),
});

The TAG_STYLE option can be used to set both START_TAG and END_TAG according to pre-defined tag styles.

my $parser = Template::Parser->new({ 
    TAG_STYLE => 'star',     # [* ... *]
});

The PRE_CHOMP and POST_CHOMP can be set to remove any whitespace before or after a directive tag, respectively.

my $parser = Template::Parser-E<gt>new({
    PRE_CHOMP  => 1,
    POST_CHOMP => 1,
});

The INTERPOLATE flag can be set to allow variables to be embedded in plain text blocks.

my $parser = Template::Parser->new({ 
    INTERPOLATE => 1,
});

Variables should be prefixed by a $ to identify them, using curly braces to explicitly scope the variable name where necessary.

Hello ${name},

The day today is ${day.today}.

The ANYCASE option can be set to allow directive keywords to be specified in any case.

# with ANYCASE set to 1
[% INCLUDE foobar %]    # OK
[% include foobar %]    # OK
[% include = 10   %]    # ERROR, 'include' is a reserved word

The GRAMMAR configuration item can be used to specify an alternate grammar for the parser. This allows a modified or entirely new template language to be constructed and used by the Template Toolkit.

use MyOrg::Template::Grammar;

my $parser = Template::Parser->new({ 
    GRAMMAR = MyOrg::Template::Grammar->new();
});

By default, an instance of the default Template::Grammar will be created and used automatically if a GRAMMAR item isn't specified.

The DEBUG option can be used to enable various debugging features of the Template::Parser module.

use Template::Constants qw( :debug );

my $template = Template->new({
    DEBUG => DEBUG_PARSER | DEBUG_DIRS,
});