[dancer-users] TT 'include file if exists'

[Nathan Bailey]

Hi all,
 More of a Template Toolkit question rather than Dancer per se, but is
there a better way to load a file only if it exists?

>From my Googling around, it appears the only approaches are (a) Try/Catch
in TT or (b) include a full <%PERL%> call (which I'm guessing may be a
little heavy to do on every page load).

I'd like to dynamically include a help file if it exists, otherwise provide
a 'No help available for this page' message. Current code looks like this:
<% help_file = 'help' _ request.request_uri.remove('\?.*') _ '.tt' %>
<% TRY %>
   <% USE File('/full_unix_path/views/' _ help_file) %>
   <% INCLUDE $help_file %>
<% CATCH File %>
   '<% help_file %>' doesn't exist: <% error.info %>
<% END %>

I'm not keen on the fixed path and it seems overkill to have to try/catch
if the file exists rather than just load it (and fail silently) or test if
it exists and then load.

Do people have better patterns for managing inline help?

thanks,
Nathan
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