[Catalyst] Re: How to access current MyApp instance ?

[Perrin Harkins]

On 7/5/07, Bill Moseley <moseley at hank.org> wrote:
> Do you avoid macros because the localization hit or because of the
> namespace issues?

I avoid them because it's too confusing for me and the reasoning about
which one to use is too hard for me to explain to designers.  I just
stick with PROCESS.  I'm a TT2 luddite, really.

> Thousands, for sure.  A small handful can really help.  It's not so
> much to do something better done in Perl, but as a way to avoid
> writing the same markup over and over.  A real plus when you want to
> change a common page element on the entire site sometime down the
> road.

Sure, header, footer, navbar, etc.  I'd have those with any SSI or
template thing.

> WRAPPERs are the biggest gem for getting out of that top-down approach
> to page design that lends itself to markup duplication.

I resisted those for a long time, but I think I might try them next time.

> Likewise, a few macros can help.  Abstracting out common elements is
> useful in Templates as it is elsewhere in the code you write.

DRY is a nice principle, but too much focus on it leads to crazy
templates.  I've seen it happen.  I try not to worry too much about a
little duplicated markup.

> Say you have a site with a large number of tables and they all should
> look similar.
>
> Each table has click-able headings and displays a page of rows with
> alternating even/odd-style, and pager links (Previous 1 2 3 4 Next).

That's a pretty complicated widget with deep ties to backend
functions.  I'd probably do some special thing for that, making it a
high-level widget with code and templates separate from the rest of
the page content.

Your MACRO use sounds reasonable.  It's all about balance.  Having
seen a lot of templates that were not maintainable because of
over-DRYing, I'm pretty cautious about this kind of thing.

- Perrin