NAME

HTML::TagCloud - Generate An HTML Tag Cloud

SYNOPSIS

  # A cloud with tags that link to other web pages.
  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
  $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1);
  $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2);
  $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3);
  my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);
  # A cloud with tags that do not link to other web pages.
  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
  $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1);
  $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2);
  $cloud->add_static($tag3, $count3);
  my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);
  # A cloud that is comprised of tags in multiple categories.
  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
  $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1, $category1);
  $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2, $category2);
  $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3, $category3);
  my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);
  # The same cloud without tags that link to other web pages.
  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new;
  $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1, $category1);
  $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2, $category2);
  $cloud->add_static($tag3, $count3, $category3);
  my $html = $cloud->html_and_css(50);
  # Obtaining uncategorized HTML for a categorized tag cloud.
  my $html = $cloud->html_without_categories();
  # Explicitly requesting categorized HTML.
  my $html = $cloud->html_with_categories();

DESCRIPTION

The HTML::TagCloud module enables you to generate "tag clouds" in HTML. Tag clouds serve as a textual way to visualize terms and topics that are used most frequently. The tags are sorted alphabetically and a larger font is used to indicate more frequent term usage. Example sites with tag clouds: <http://www.43things.com/>, <http://www.astray.com/recipes/> and <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/>. This module provides a simple interface to generating a CSS-based HTML tag cloud. You simply pass in a set of tags, their URL and their count. This module outputs stylesheet-based HTML. You may use the included CSS or use your own.

CONSTRUCTOR

new

The constructor takes a few optional arguments:

  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(levels=>10);

if not provided, levels defaults to 24

  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(distinguish_adjacent_tags=>1);

If distinguish_adjacent_tags is true HTML::TagCloud will use different CSS classes for adjacent tags in order to be able to make it easier to distinguish adjacent multi-word tags. If not specified, this parameter defaults to a false value.

  my $cloud = HTML::TagCloud->new(categories=>\@categories);

If categories are provided then tags are grouped in separate divisions by category when the HTML fragment is generated.

METHODS

add

This module adds a tag into the cloud. You pass in the tag name, its URL and its count:

  $cloud->add($tag1, $url1, $count1);
  $cloud->add($tag2, $url2, $count2);
  $cloud->add($tag3, $url3, $count3);

add_static

This module adds a tag that does not link to another web page into the cloud. You pass in the tag name and its count:

  $cloud->add_static($tag1, $count1);
  $cloud->add_static($tag2, $count2);

tags($limit)

Returns a list of hashrefs representing each tag in the cloud, sorted by alphabet. Each tag has the following keys: name, count, url and level.

css

This returns the CSS that will format the HTML returned by the html() method with tags which have a high count as larger:

  my $css  = $cloud->css;

html($limit)

This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS (you should use both css() and html() or simply the html_and_css() method). If any categories were specified when items were being placed in the cloud then the tags will be organized into divisions by category name. If a limit is provided, only the top $limit tags are in the cloud, otherwise all the tags are in the cloud:

  my $html = $cloud->html(200);

html_with_categories($limit)

This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS. The tags will be arranged into divisions by category. If a limit is provided, only the top $limit tags are in the cloud. Otherwise, all tags are in the cloud.

html_without_categories($limit)

This returns the tag cloud as HTML without the embedded CSS. The tags will not be grouped by category if this method is used to generate the HTML.

html_and_css($limit)

This returns the tag cloud as HTML with embedded CSS. If a limit is provided, only the top $limit tags are in the cloud, otherwise all the tags are in the cloud:

  my $html_and_css = $cloud->html_and_css(50);

AUTHOR

Leon Brocard, "<acme@astray.com>".

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2005-6, Leon Brocard This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.