[Catalyst-dev] RFC: new helper api

Zbigniew Lukasiak zzbbyy at gmail.com
Fri Jun 5 20:28:17 GMT 2009


On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 4:51 AM, Devin Austin<devin.austin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Howdy all,
>
> I've put together an RFC for the new Catalyst::Helper API.
> The body text is located below, but it is also available here in a pretty
> formatted
> version:http://www.codedright.net/2009/06/rfc-catalysthelper-api.html
>
> For the improvement of the Catalyst::Helper API and Catalyst development in
> general, comments are of the utmost importance.  The more feedback
> I can get, the better and quicker the API will be completed.
>
> Thank you kindly!
>
> -dhoss
>
> Intro:
> This document is to get opinions on a new, up to date set up  and
> refactoring of the Catalyst::Helper API.
>
> What We Have
> Currently, all template/image data is hideously store inline with code in
> the __DATA__ section of Catalyst::Helper.pm.  The API is designed to handle
> data this way, which is wrong wrong wrong for a number of reasons:
>
>  You have to actually delve into Catalyst internals to edit any of these
> files
>  If you create a helper, your data must be inline as well.
>  Its current layout does not reflect the directory hierarchy of a Catalyst
> application, thus making it pretty dang hard to expand upon/upgrade.
>
> There are no methods to allow you to edit previously created files, unless
> you want to create your own helper and feverishly create your own file
> modification method(s).
> I can attest to the stress this causes, as I've been doing a good deal of
> yak shaving cleaning this code up and creating the proper tests for it.
> It's not a very fun ordeal at this point.
>
> What we want
> From the feedback I've gathered thus far:
>
> We do want previously created helper files to be modifiable via
> Catalyst::Helpers.  For instance, updating Makefile.PL, updating myapp.conf
> to reflect changes, updating DBIC schema files to reflect database changes
> (with minimal pain). Also, add an infrastructure for modifying existing
> catalyst code, e.g. moving Catalyst::Helper::AuthDBIC from an  experimental
> proof of concept to something that people might actually want to use for
> their own stuff.
>
> We do want to be able to remove a good deal of the boilerplate code that
> still seems to need to be created manually, for each app, even though it's
> the exact same code for each instance.
>
> We do want to set up the helper files in the hierarchy that a Catalyst
> application is created in, thus cutting quickly to the chase in the way of
> creating an app.  It's a simple name and Template::Toolkit variable
> translation, then writing the file to the filesystem process then.  This
> gets our binary data out of the API code, the template data out of the API
> code, and generally makes every one more happy.
>
> With this said, here are some more specific ideas that have been passed my
> way that I think would really help further advance our precious Helper API:
>
>  Beat up MooseX::Getopt to deal with pass-through options, so you can deal
> with passing data structures as arguments easier. Not to mention actually
> start USING it in the Helper API.
> Add a feature to write out DBIC schema files for deployment.  Yes,
> make_schema_at does this, but you have to write your own little script to
> enjoy this morsel of functionality.  It would be nice to have it packaged up
> and ready to go for you.
> Have something like TTSite, but less sucky.  Perhaps there could be a
> default layout that can be created, or you can create your own sort of skin
> and have that the default generation.  Or, better yet, packaged skins that
> users can submit to $somewhere and have the author choose a "theme" for
> their app. For instance, using $javascript framework and $css framework to
> do so, like in chapt 11 of the upcoming book (Example usage:
> http://www.uow.edu.au/~kd21/)
>
> These are the current ideas I have, and that others have submitted.  Sure
> this RFC is a bit bare, but we don't have a whole ton to work with at the
> moment with Catalyst::Helper, so we need more feedback to beef things up.

Hi,

All that you mention above are great steps ahead - and it'll be
wonderful if they are implemented.  If I may add something to that
list - it is a possibility to run the helpers in aggregation - so that
you could define the configuration once for all the parts and then run
catalyst.pl to generate the whole application in one step.   Currently
you run catalyst.pl from the outside - and then you go into the
generated directory and use one of the generated scripts to generate
the further components.  In theory it should be possible that all that
generation is done by catalyst.pl.

Cheers,
Zbigniew
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/



More information about the Catalyst-dev mailing list