[Catalyst] RFC: Catalyst::Controller::REST::DBIC

[Zbigniew Lukasiak]

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 2:38 AM, luke saunders <luke.saunders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have started to write a Catalyst base controller for REST style CRUD
>  via DBIC. I have noticed that a number of other people have been
>  working on or are thinking about working on something similar, most
>  notabley J. Shirley who seems to be creating
>  Catalyst::Controller::REST::DBIC::Item
>  (http://dev.catalystframework.org/svnweb/Catalyst/browse/Catalyst-Controller-REST-DBIC-Item/)
>  and some chaps from a recent thread on this list (entitled
>  "Dispatching with Chained vs HTTP method").
>
>  Ideally I would like to merge J. Shirley's effort into mine (or visa
>  versa) along with anything that anyone else has. Basically I want to
>  avoid ending up with a load of modules that all do the same thing.
>
>  My effort is heavily based on something mst wrote a while ago, and
>  since then I've ended up writing something very similar for every
>  project I've worked on which indicates it's worth OSing. Essentially
>  it is used like so:
>
>   package MyApp::Controller::API::REST::CD;
>
>   use base qw/Catalyst::Controller::REST::DBIC/;
>
>   ...
>
>   __PACKAGE__->config
>     ( action => { setup => { PathPart => 'cd', Chained =>
>  '/api/rest/rest_base' } },
>       class => 'RestTestDB::CD',
>       create_requires => ['artist', 'title', 'year' ],
>       update_allows => ['title', 'year']
>       );
>
>  And this gets you the following endpoints to fire requests at:
>     /api/rest/cd/create
>     /api/rest/cd/id/[cdid]/update
>     /api/rest/cd/id/[cdid]/delete
>     /api/rest/cd/id/[cdid]/add_to_rel/[relation]
>     /api/rest/cd/id/[cdid]/remove_from_rel/[relation]
>
>  The full source is here:
>  http://lukesaunders.me.uk/dists/Catalyst-Controller-REST-DBIC-1.000000.tar.gz
>
>  If you have a few moments please have a look, especially if you are
>  working on something similar. Today I even wrote a test suite which
>  has a test app and is probably the best place to look to see what it
>  does.

I've been planning for a more REST-like update to InstantCRUD for a
long time.  My approach is a bit different because for validation and
for generating form's HTML I use HTML::Widget.  I believe validation
is important and separate enough to have a separate package (and I
don't want to reinvent the wheel - so I use what is available at
CPAN).  I also choose to generate the HTML - because I believe there
is too much logic (classes for errors, options from the database,
subforms from the database - see below) in it for the simplistic
Template::Toolkit language - an elegant solution for that could be
also a TT plugin.

Now I am working on porting Instant to use Rose::HTML::Form instead of
HTML::Wiget - it will give it much more solid base.

One more difference in my approach is that the 'update' action will be
able to edit not just one row from the DB - but all the interrelated
records that together make a full object.  This means also adding and
removing the related records - so I'll not have the add_to_rel
remove_from_rel actions.

There is also an effort by Peter Carman:
http://search.cpan.org/~karman/CatalystX-CRUD-0.25/lib/CatalystX/CRUD/REST.pm
- and I more or less agreed with Peter on some basics - so that
hopefully our code will be compatible and maybe even will form
together just one solution.

Finally I am waiting for the Moose port of Catalyst - so that all the
CRUD functionality could be just a Role instead of forcing the user to
'use base'.

>
>  Note that it lacks:
>  - list and view type methods which dump objects to JSON (or whatever)
>  - clever validation - it should validate based on the DBIC column
>  definitions but it doesn't
>  - any auth - not sure if it should or not, but it's possible
>
>  Also it doesn't distinguish between POST, PUT, DELETE and GET HTTP
>  requests favouring instead entirely separate endpoints, but that's up
>  for discussion.
>
>  So, J. Shirley, do you have any interest in a merge? And others, do
>  you have ideas and would you like to contribute?
>
>  Thanks,
>  Luke.
>
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>



-- 
Zbigniew Lukasiak
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/