What Is ahab?

ahab stands for "An HTML Auto-Builder". The purpose of ahab is to simplify webpage maintenance. Often, a web developer will duplicate work by manually putting identical HTML code in every page on a site, in order to provide a consistent look and feel to the user. For instance, usually all or most of the pages on a particular site will have the same background graphic.

Not only is this manual process tedious, but it brings along with it the problem of changing this duplicate code. In the above example, if a site's background is going to change, the code specifying the background will have to change in every page on the site.

ahab provides methods for not only simplifying the first step (adding standard HTML code to any page), but eliminating the second (manually reproducing changes in multiple pages.)

The fundamental concepts of ahab are the templateHTML file and the inputHTML file.

The templateHTML file is where the web developer should put any HTML code that is repeated throughout the pages of his site. In the above example, this would probably include all the header information, the background tag to point to the appropriate graphic, and some footer information.

The inputHTML file is the file to which ahab will apply the templateHTML file. For a new page which has not yet had the template applied, this would probably include very basic HTML, perhaps the text for one specific page that is to appear over the fancy background that the template supplies. However, after the template is applied, and ahab builds the composite HTML file, that file itself can be used as an input file. In that case, ahab will replace the template information, instead of adding it.

ahab also provides other features which facilitate automatic page configuration. For instance, HTML code that is written in a special block of the templateHTML can be automatically included in the composite output file, providing that the input file tells ahab to include the block in a specific location.

In addition, the developer can specify parts of the templateHTML as being "public", or modifiable by the input files. In other words, parts of the templateHTML can be default, instead of mandatory, and can be changed in each individual file if desired.

A properly configured templateHTML file is the key to harnessing ahab's power. It can turn maintenance of a large website from a major hassle into a spring breeze.

Back to main ahab page

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