Standard site layout xml

[Mark Knoop]

> Just checking you have seen ttree?
>
> http://template-toolkit.org/docs/tools/ttree.html
>
> And plugins like:
>
> http://search.cpan.org/~abw/Template-XML-2.17/
>
> As well as some of the other plugins:
>
> http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Template%3A%3APlugin&mode=dist
>

Ah ok it figures that this is part of the TT framework. Not sure quite how 
to get it to do what I need on first glance but will spend some time with 
it.

Just to clarify (on rereading my original post it is a bit ambiguous) I am 
currently doing something like the following:

<site>
    <index file="index.tmpl">
        <item id="Some_Item" position=1 />
        <item id="Another_Item" position=2 />
        <category="Some_Category" position=1 file="category.tmpl">
            <item id="You_Get_The_Idea" position=1 />
            <item id="Etc" position=2 />
            <category="2nd_Tier" postion=1 file="category.tmpl">
            ...
            </ category>
        </ category>
        <category="Another_Category" postion=2 file="category.tmpl">
            ...
        </ category>
    </index>
    <other file="other.tmpl" />
    <etc etc="etc.tmpl />
<site>
<content>
    <item id="Some_Item" item_meta_data="..." />
    <item id="Another_Item"  item_meta_data="..."  />
    <item id="You_Get_The_Idea"  item_meta_data="..."  />
    <item id="Etc"  item_meta_data="..."  />
</content>

and have a script that reads in the <site> data and uses template file which 
have place holders for links to items and other categories - this enables me 
to create large and complex site maps with the same few templates quite 
easily (as long as the pages are all the same, although I can in theory use 
different templates for each file as specified in the category element). 
The pre TT template files look something like this:

...
<table>
<tr><td>GBUILD[IMG:Banner]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[CATEGORY:NAME]</td></tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_1]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_2]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_1]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_2]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_3]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_4]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_3]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_4]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_5]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:THUMB_6]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_5]</td><td>GBUILD[ITEM:LINK_6]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[CATEGORY:LINK_PREVIOUS]</td><td>GBUILD[CATEGORY:LINK_NEXT]</td></tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>GBUILD[AD:AD_001]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[CATEGORY:LINK_%]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[AD:AD_002]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[LINK:Index]</td></tr>
<tr><td>GBUILD[LINK:Terms]</td></tr>
</table>
...

so the build.pl script can match up links and thumbs to items, create 
multiple pages with forward and back links when there are more then (in this 
case) 6 items in a category. It means I can quickly and easily move content 
items and categories around and rebuild the site.

As always would be interested in other approaches...

Cheers
Mark