[Catalyst-dev] Re: Quick Catalyst::Plugin::SubRequest notes

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

Oh yeah,

[a user question, so I’m taking this over to the other list]

* Aristotle Pagaltzis <pagaltzis at gmx.de> [2008-03-11 03:59]:
> And honestly, it seems to me that if you start thinking about
> nesting subrequests, it’s probably time to restructure the app.

the reason I used ::SubRequest in my case is because I cannot see
any easy way to forward to an entire chain. It goes like this:

I have a chain that dispatches a URL `/app/trial/23` like so:

    /internal    (checks if user is logged in)
    /trial/base  (stash a bunch of things common to all trials)
    /trial/item  (stash the data for the trial #23, or 404 if absent)
    /trial/view  (dummy)

(The last step is necessary because `item` is CaptureArgs(1) so
I can have URLs like `/app/trial/23/edit`.)

Anyway, so, I also have URLs like `/clinicXY/trial/23`, which I
want to serve basically in the same way as `/app/trial/23`,
except with a different wrapper template and slightly for
different permission checks as that is a publically visible page
whereas `/app/trial/23` is only accessible to logged in users.

Unfortunately for me, `$c->forward` doesn’t work that way – if I
forward to an action, it forwards to *that one* action,
disregarding the rest of the chain ahead of it. I’m not
complaining about that as I see the utility of it.

Now I really like the way chains let me populate the stash in
little steps; but that means running `/trial/view` makes no sense
at all in my app without running `/trial/base` and `/trial/item`
beforehand. So when I forward to `/trial/view`, what I really
need is to include to the entire chain that leads up to it. I
could do write that out manually, but then I’d be hardcoding a
repetition of the chain everywhere I need to forward to it.

So I ended up using ::SubRequest because that launches a full
subordinate dispatch cycle which will chain properly and DRYly.

Is that a recommendable solution, or am I bringing out the
combine harvester to tidy up a flower pot?

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>