{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% set title = 'Overview' %}
{% block body %}
<h1>WebHelpers</h1>

<img src="_static/webhelpers-logo.png" width="100" height="110"
style="float:left; margin-right:1em" />
  
<p>WebHelpers is a wide variety of utility functions for web applications and
other applications. It can be used with any web framework.  <strong>Version
1.0</strong> was released 2009-06-01, and contains many enhancements compared
to 0.6.4 while remaining compatible.  See <a href="whats_new.html">What's
New</a> for a list of changes in 1.0 and upgrading hints.  (The helpers
deprecated in 0.6 are removed in 1.0, including the entire rails suite.)</p>

<p>WebHelpers includes the widely-used HTML tag builder with smart escaping and
convenience functions for common tags such as form fields. The common builder
ensures the tags are syntactically correct and prevent cross-site scripting
attacks and double-escaping.</p> 

<p>Other helpers perform text processing, split a large number of records into
pages, generate Atom/RSS feeds with geographical (GIS) data, handle MIME types,
calculate numerica statistics, and more.  There are also high-level container
types, including a value counter and accumulator.  There are lists of country
names, country codes, US states, Canadian provinces, and UK counties.</p>

<p>WebHelpers is pure Python and has no dependencies.  However, a few
helpers depend on 
<a href="http://routes.groovie.org/">Routes</a>, 
<a href="http://python.org/pypi/Unidecode/">unidecode</a>, 
<a href="http://pythonpaste.org/webob/">WebOb</a>, or
<a href="http://pylonshq.com/">Pylons</a>,
as noted in their documentation.  WebHelpers requires Python 2.4 or higher,
and has not yet been tested with Python 3. An extensive test suite for doctest
and Nose is included.</p>

<p>For support/question/patches, please use the
<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss">pylons-discuss</a>
mailing list.</p>


  <h2>Documentation</h2>
  <table class="contentstable" align="center" style="margin-left: 30px"><tr>
    <td width="50%">
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("contents") }}">Contents</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">for a complete overview</span></p>
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("whats_new") }}">What's New</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">new features, upgrading, and full changelog</span></p>
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("todo") }}">TODO</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">future development plans</span></p>
    </td><td width="50%">
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("genindex") }}">General Index</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">all functions, classes, terms</span></p>
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("modindex") }}">Module Index</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">quick access to all documented modules</span></p>
      <p class="biglink"><a class="biglink" href="{{ pathto("search") }}">Search</a><br/>
         <span class="linkdescr">search the documentation</span></p>
    </td></tr>
  </table>
  
  <p>Download <a href="http://webhelpers.groovie.org/webhelpers.pdf">WebHelpers PDF documentation</a>.</p>

  <h2>Development</h2>

  <p>WebHelpers source code is at BitBucket.</p>

  <blockquote>
    <a href="http://bitbucket.org/bbangert/webhelpers/">Overview</a> -
    <a href="http://bitbucket.org/bbangert/webhelpers/wiki/">Wiki</a> -
    <a href="http://bitbucket.org/bbangert/webhelpers/src/">Source code</a>  -
    <a href="http://bitbucket.org/bbangert/webhelpers/issues/">Bug tracker</a>
  </blockquote>

  <p>To check out the Mercurial repository:</p>
    
  <pre>hg clone http://www.bitbucket.org/bbangert/webhelpers</pre>

{% endblock %}