Bit of History

At Emap we often has lots and lots of pages of results, from holidays to concert tickets, and every system had it's own way of implimenting it, all crap.

I had started a module for this, then Leon joined and I got him to do it properly. Data::Page was born, and now you have Data::Pageset which takes it 1 step further (which you don't always need, hence a seperate module).

Data::Pageset uses Data::Page as a base class, so you can access all the methods in Data::Page as well.

Why did you code this Data::Page(set) you speak of ?

• Page numbering is boring
• Page numbering has several anoying cases (which you always forget)
• Putting in page numbers is a design thing
• Changing the number of pages to list, is a design thing!
• Being able to jump through groups of pages makes navigation faster

Why would I need this Data::Page(set) thing ?

Ever seen something like this:

Wondered why they limit it to 20 pages ?

Developer "We didn't have space to put more pages"!

Wouldn't you prefer something like this:

Ok, so how would I do that ?

	use Data::Pageset;
	my $page_set = Data::Pageset->new({
		'total_entries'		=> $search->total_results(),
		'entries_per_page'	=> $form_input->{'per_page'},
		'current_page'		=> $form_input->{'current_page'},
		'pages_per_set'		=> 10,
	});

		%vals = (
			'page_set'			=> $page_set,
			....
		);
		$tt->process($template, \%vals);

But I'm the designer as well!

Ok... I guess I can show you that... this is bassed on TT but all we're doing is calling the methods. It could be used anywhere, even with print statments!

 
[% IF page_set.previous_set %]
		<a href="[% url_stub %]&current_page=[% page_set.previous %]">PREV [% page_set.pages_per_set %]</a> - 
[% END %]

 
[% FOREACH page = page_set.pages_in_set %]
[% IF page == page_set.current_page %]
		<b>[% page %]</b>,
[% ELSE %]
		<a href="[% url_stub %]&current_page=[% page %]">[% page %]</a>,
[% END %]
[% END %]

 
[% IF page_set.next_set %]
		- <a href="[% url_stub %]&current_page=[% page_set.next_set %]">NEXT [% page_set.pages_per_set %]</a>
[% END %]

So, other methods are there ?

	print "         First page: ", $page_info->first_page, "\n";
	print "          Last page: ", $page_info->last_page, "\n";
	print "          Next page: ", $page_info->next_page, "\n";
	print "      Previous page: ", $page_info->previous_page, "\n";
	
	# Results on current page
	print "First entry on page: ", $page_info->first, "\n";
	print " Last entry on page: ", $page_info->last, "\n";
	
	# Can add in the pages per set after the object is created
	$page_info->pages_per_set($pages_per_set);
	
	print "First page of previous page set: ",  $page_info->previous_set, "\n";
	print "    First page of next page set: ",  $page_info->next_set, "\n";
	
	# Print the page numbers of the current set
	foreach my $page ($page_info->pages_in_set()) {
		if($page == $page_info->current_page()) {
			print "$page ";
		} else {
			print "$page ";
		}
	}
	
	# This method returns the total number of entries.
	print "Entries:", $page_info->total_entries, "\n";
	
	
	# This method returns the total number of entries per page.
	print "Per page:", $page_info->entries_per_page, "\n";
	
	# This method returns the current page number.
	print "Page: ", $page_info->current_page, "\n";
	
	# This method returns the previous page number, if one
	  exists. Otherwise it returns undefined.
	
	if ($page_info->previous_page) {
		print "Previous page number: ", $page_info->previous_page, "\n";
	}
	
	# This method returns the next page number, if one exists.
	Otherwise it returns undefined.
	
	if ($page_info->next_page) {
		print "Next page number: ", $page_info->next_page, "\n";
	}
	
	# This method takes in an listref, and returns only the values which are on the current page.
	@visible_holidays = $page_info->splice(\@holidays);