[Catalyst] how to reuse Catalyst Schema for non-web purposes?

[Moritz Onken]

>
>
> So it's the model I put the business logic in?  That sounds ok, for  
> now.  But what about this:
> * Input from the web has to be validated.  May be I use  
> Data::FormValidator, may be FormFu.  However, I may have to validate  
> the params I get from the script (eg. data import from ERP systems),  
> too.  Do I have to implement the validation again?  And maybe  
> normalization/converting, too?  Or where would you place these  
> functionality?  Extra modules?

You are not limited by the number of models. You can write a model  
which does the form/data validation and which calls the dbic model to  
insert the data. Just place an extra layer between your controller and  
your dbic model.

> * What about business logic that is in not only bound to a specific  
> schema but has an overall logic that fetches data from different  
> tables, adds some somewhere and produces results?  How would you  
> implement such a logic?  Any examples?

I would write an extra model for this or you create a resultset class  
which can handle that. This very much depends on the data which is  
needed.

> * An example for using data and logic outside of the web app would  
> be generating invoices by night.  That process would bring out some  
> PDFs which will be printed or sent by mail through another script.   
> Shouldn't a view be involved in this process that builds the PDFs  
> from templates?  Is it possible to build this example upon a  
> Catalyst web app?  Examples?

I use Template::Plugin::Latex to create a TeX document which is then  
converted to a pdf. But this is totally independent from catalyst. It  
is a script which is run once a day and generates the invoices. No  
need to follow the MVC scheme here.

If you plan to run those jobs with catalyst I'll suggest you have a  
look a job queue which can help you with that (e.g. TheSchwartz).


moritz