[Catalyst] New CRUD/Scaffolding module

[Mike McKay]

Perrin Harkins wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 21:58 +0200, Johan Lindström wrote:
> 
>>When I developed a Maypole application I found that it required quite a bit 
>>of code spelunking to get things done. So I'm curious: is it possible to 
>>get started with any of these frameworks without looking at the source?
> 
> 
> Yes.  The OI2 docs are excellent, and CGI::Application is so simple that
> you hardly need to do more than look at the synopsis and examples.
> CGI::App has  different goals than Catalyst though.
> 
> One thing the OI2 docs do is offer some basic explanation of things that
> are not specifically part of it but that you have to know in order to
> use it, like Template Toolkit.  (You could use something else, but the
> tutorials have to choose something.)  Most people balk at doing that,
> but I think it paid off in terms of how complete the tutorials are.

I just started Catalyst hacking this week, and it has been exciting but 
also pretty challenging/frustrating at times. I considered myself a 
pretty good perler, but what I was good at was writing everything from 
scratch. Doing things the Catalyst way has taught me that most of the 
basic problems I run into have already been solved. Figuring out how 
find use those pre-built solutions and getting in the mindest of the 
implementor is the challenge (Template Toolkit for example). Using a 
combination of hops/mojo/serverdb I am slowly getting my head around 
everything. I have read the Intro doc 3-4 times, and each time I 
understand it more and more. I have read the Cookbook doc 10 times 
probably, and it is a good start, but it needs more explanation - too 
much knowledge is assumed.
<rant>
Apologies to the author, but this sentence just pisses me off:
Modify the $c->form() parameters to match your needs, and don't forget 
to copy the templates. ;)
I am pretty sure that wink is there to piss me off: Wink - you have no 
idea what I just said - wink. No wonder us Catalyst newbies are 
struggling with scaffolding.
</rant>
I think most people that do use Catalyst will be the learn-from-example 
types. It would be really helpful to over-comment the code that is being 
used for the examples. I mean, I am eventually understanding it and 
debug and Data::Dumper helps, but a brief comment would really speed me 
on my way.
Now perhaps I will reveal my true ignorance, but how are we supposed to 
know which methods come from where:

   my $loader = $c->comp('Hops::M::CDBI')->loader;

comp? I never saw that in Catalyst::Manual::Intro.

   [% class.to_field(column).as_XML %]<br/>

maybe it is obvious if you are familiar with Class::DBI and the many 
other (really helpful) plugins that are used, but it took a while for me 
to find this one. I came up with a script to figure out where the 
to_field comes from:

grep -rni to_field /home/crazy/.cpan/ | pgrep -b "lib/(.*\.pm)" | uniq | 
perl -p -e "s/lib\//perldoc /; s/\//::/g;s/\.pm//"

Any suggestions to guide me would be much appreciated - and clearly my 
experience will be improved upon as documentation expands, examples 
mature, etc. Catalyst has so much potential.

A wiki would be great, and I must say, the brief time I spent in IRC was 
really really helpful. But I am dialing in from an expensive connection 
in Africa and I can't hang out in IRC all day - at least not until my 
VSAT arrives. :-)

Keep up the great work, and hopefully I will be able to add to the 
documentation once I get my head around everything.

Cheers,
Mike