  In this paper, we use basic formal variable techniques to study certain
categories of modules for the toroidal Lie algebra $\tau$. More specifically,
we define and study two categories $\mathcal{E}_{\tau}$ and
$\mathcal{C}_{\tau}$ of $\tau$-modules using generating functions, where
$\mathcal{E}_{\tau}$ is proved to contain the evaluation modules while
$\mathcal{C}_{\tau}$ contains certain restricted $\tau$-modules, the evaluation
modules, and their tensor product modules. Furthermore, we classify the
irreducible integrable modules in categories $\mathcal{E}_{\tau}$ and
$\mathcal{C}_{\tau}$.
