[Catalyst] Accessing action URIs outside of Catalyst app

[Brian Kirkbride]

Matt S Trout wrote:
> 
> On 8 Jan 2007, at 16:59, Brian Kirkbride wrote:
> 
>> Matt S Trout wrote:
>>> On 3 Jan 2007, at 20:21, Brian Kirkbride wrote:
>>>> Hello all,
>>>>
>>>> Is there a best practice way to maintain a map of URLs used in a 
>>>> Catalyst application.  To clarify, I need to map actions to URLs 
>>>> outside of Catalyst (CRON jobs, Emailers, etc) and won't have access 
>>>> to $c->uri_for or the $c->dispatcher.
>>> If you need to do this, your design is broken.
>>
>> Perhaps, but I ascribe that to it being in transition :)
>>
>>> Step back. Explain what you're trying to achieve.
>>
>> Automated emails sent out to users need to provide them with a list of 
>> different webapp URLs.  These actions are asynchronous from the webapp 
>> itself.  I have a number of scripts (a few are legacy dinosaurs) that 
>> need webapp URLs as well.
>>
>> If I choose to change /cancel to /account/cancel later on, I'd like to 
>> do it in one place.  I realize that without parsing the controllers' 
>> actions I can't expect the outside code to get those URLs.  I would 
>> also rather not "use MyApp.pm" in simple scripts that only need my 
>> model logic and a URL, and in some cases I can't.
> 
> Explain "can't" in a form that doesn't make me feel you've just 
> completely missed the point of "achieve" and told me what you're trying 
> (failing) to implement :)
> 

I'd like to routinely send an email to a user telling them to pay for something, 
including a link to a page in my webapp allowing them to do so.

>>
>> My hope was to configure the URL mapping in a config file, which could 
>> be accessed by my webapp and outside scripts.  Something like this:
>>
>> sub cancel : Args(1) : Path($urlmap->{account_cancel}) {
>>     # action
>> }
>>
>> This, of course, does not work because attributes do not evaluate 
>> their arguments.  Perhaps my solution is to subclass the Dispatcher to 
>> allow for:
>>
>> sub cancel : Args(1) : FromURLMap('account_cancel') {
>>     # action
>> }
>>
>> That wouldn't be too hard.  Thoughts?
> 
> Yeah, Catalyst already has an implementation for this -
> 
> package MyApp::Controller::Foo;
> 
> ...
> 
> sub cancel :Action :Args(1) { ... }
> 
> then in myapp.conf
> 
> <Controller Foo>
>   <Action cancel>
>     Path /cancel
>   </Action>
> </Controller>
> 
> You can apply any attribute like that, although setting Args or similar 
> from the config file might be considered unwise.
> 

Perfect, I had missed that this type of URL to action mapping was possible with 
the :Action attribute.  I have no interest in placing Args or other attributes 
in the config.  This should work fine for me.

Thanks,
Brian