NAME

eSTAR::RTML - Object Orientatied interface to create and parse RTML messages

SYNOPSIS

  $rtml = new eSTAR::RTML();

DESCRIPTION

The module creates and parses RTML v2.1, the eSTAR version of the V2.x language specification. It provides a simple interface to automatically generate RTML messages used by the eSTAR project, but should be tweakable for more generic use fairly easily.

REVISION

$Id: RTML.pm,v 1.5 2003/07/15 20:58:11 aa Exp $

METHODS

Constructor

new

Create a new instance from a hash of options

$rtml_object = new eSTAR::RTML( File => $rtml_file );
$rtml_object = new eSTAR::RTML( Source => $rtml_document );

returns a reference to an RTML object.

Accessor Methods

determine_type

Return the type of the RTML document

$type = $rtml->determine_type();

this is the only information about the document available via this module, to fully parse the RTML the eSTAR::RTML objet should be passed to an eSTAR::RTML::Parse object.

return_tree

Returnd the RTML document tree

$type = $rtml->return_tree();

used by the eSTAR::RTML::Parse module to pull the XML::Parse document tree from the eSTAR::RTML object. While a public method, its hard to see why you would want to do this unles the output is going to be parsed by a module that understands such trees. In which case it might be better to call XML::Parse directly rather than deal with the eSTAR::RTML infrastructure.

General Methods

configure

Configures the object, takes an options hash as an argument

$rtml->configure( %options );

does nothing if the hash is not supplied.

file

Populates the object from a file returning the version number of the DTD.

$dtd = $rtml->file( $rtml_file );

This method is called directly from configure() is the File key and value is passed into to teh object in the %options hash.

source

Populates the object from a scalar returning the version number of the DTD.

$dtd = $rtml->source( $rtml );

This method is called directly from configure() is the Document key and value is passed into to teh object in the %options hash.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2002 University of Exeter. All Rights Reserved.

This program was written as part of the eSTAR project and is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License.

AUTHORS

Alasdair Allan <aa@astro.ex.ac.uk>,