#NAME

HTML::HeadParser - Parse <HEAD> section of a HTML document

#SYNOPSIS

require HTML::HeadParser;
$p = HTML::HeadParser->new;
$p->parse($text) and  print "not finished";

$p->header('Title')          # to access <title>....</title>
$p->header('Content-Base')   # to access <base href="http://...">
$p->header('Foo')            # to access <meta http-equiv="Foo" content="...">
$p->header('X-Meta-Author')  # to access <meta name="author" content="...">
$p->header('X-Meta-Charset') # to access <meta charset="...">

#DESCRIPTION

The HTML::HeadParser is a specialized (and lightweight) HTML::Parser that will only parse the <HEAD>...</HEAD> section of an HTML document. The parse() method will return a FALSE value as soon as some <BODY> element or body text are found, and should not be called again after this.

Note that the HTML::HeadParser might get confused if raw undecoded UTF-8 is passed to the parse() method. Make sure the strings are properly decoded before passing them on.

The HTML::HeadParser keeps a reference to a header object, and the parser will update this header object as the various elements of the <HEAD> section of the HTML document are recognized. The following header fields are affected:

#Content-Base:

The Content-Base header is initialized from the <base href="..."> element.

#Title:

The Title header is initialized from the <title>...</title> element.

#Isindex:

The Isindex header will be added if there is a <isindex> element in the <head>. The header value is initialized from the prompt attribute if it is present. If no prompt attribute is given it will have '?' as the value.

#X-Meta-Foo:

All <meta> elements containing a name attribute will result in headers using the prefix X-Meta- appended with the value of the name attribute as the name of the header, and the value of the content attribute as the pushed header value.

The ':' character can't be represented in header field names, so if the meta element contains this char it's substituted with '-' before forming the field name.

#METHODS

The following methods (in addition to those provided by the superclass) are available:

#$hp = HTML::HeadParser->new

#$hp = HTML::HeadParser->new( $header )

The object constructor. The optional $header argument should be a reference to an object that implement the header() and push_header() methods as defined by the HTTP::Headers class. Normally it will be of some class that is a or delegates to the HTTP::Headers class.

If no $header is given HTML::HeadParser will create an HTTP::Headers object by itself (initially empty).

#$hp->header;

Returns a reference to the header object.

#$hp->header( $key )

Returns a header value. It is just a shorter way to write $hp->header->header($key).

#EXAMPLE

$h = HTTP::Headers->new;
$p = HTML::HeadParser->new($h);
$p->parse(<<EOT);
<title>Stupid example</title>
<base href="http://www.linpro.no/lwp/">
Normal text starts here.
EOT
undef $p;
print $h->title;   # should print "Stupid example"

#SEE ALSO

HTML::Parser, HTTP::Headers

The HTTP::Headers class is distributed as part of the libwww-perl package. If you don't have that distribution installed you need to provide the $header argument to the HTML::HeadParser constructor with your own object that implements the documented protocol.

#COPYRIGHT

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.