[Catalyst] Where is the "Catalyst for Dummies" page?

[J. Shirley]

On 10/19/07, Faber J. Fedor <faber at linuxnj.com> wrote:
>
> I've been playing with Catalyst seriously for the past week ( and
> not-seriously for the past several months) and I can't figure out what
> to do with it; I can't even figure out how to display a "Hello World"
> page using a template.
>
> Yes, I've read the tutorials, attended the lectures, etc..  I still
> don't get it. Oh, I understand the MVC concept; it's the implementation
> I don't grok.
>
> So I decided to go digging through MyApp to tease out the FM.  Two
> questions immediately popped up:
>
> 1.  When I start MyApp and go to http://localhost:3000, I see the
> Catalyst welcome page.  Now what?  How do I (or more importantly, my
> users) know to go to http://localhost:3000/login?
>
> 2.  Looking through Login.pm, I see a call to
>
>     $c->login($username,$password)
>
> Where is this function? 'grep -ir login *' doesn't return anything that
> looks like a function declaration. (Yes, I know $c is the context object
> that ties the different parts of a Catalyst object together.)
>
> I think most of the other FM I don't get (like
> $c->model('MyAppDB::Book')->all) is related to DBIC magic which I'm not
> interested in right now.
>
> FWIW, my current project is to read/write a YAML file via a form.
>
> Is there a page that explains how to get Catalyst working that suitable
> for Dummies, preferably without a database backend to simplify things?
>
> --
>

All of your questions are really answered in the tutorial.  Here are links
answering each question you asked.

How to generate a view using templates, ala TTSite:
http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Catalyst-Manual-5.701003/lib/Catalyst/Manu=
al/Tutorial/CatalystBasics.pod#Create_a_Catalyst_View_Using_TTSite

How to authenticate users:
http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Catalyst-Manual-5.701003/lib/Catalyst/Manu=
al/Tutorial/Authentication.pod

This uses the "Authentication" plugin, which provides the ->login method.

You can read up on it here:
http://search.cpan.org/~nuffin/Catalyst-Plugin-Authentication-0.09/lib/Cata=
lyst/Plugin/Authentication.pm

Please note that this is the older version, and there has been a newer API
that provides a number of better features.  Just search for
Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication on the CPAN and you should be able to find
it.

And, if you don't want a database then don't use a database model.  You can
create a model that does whatever you want.  Search the CPAN for
"Catalyst::Model" and you'll see a lot.

Here's a good path to follow:
1) How would I accomplish [business goal] as a library that other people can
use?
2) How can I test [business goal]
3) Write that API as a separate perl module (MyApp::BizLogic)
4) Now, write a thin Catalyst adapter class (MyApp::Model::BizLogic) that
provides the Catalyst hooks to make it easier to talk to in the controller.
5) Launch, and be successful.

Happy hacking,
-J


-- =

J. Shirley :: jshirley at gmail.com :: Killing two stones with one bird...
http://www.toeat.com
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