[Dbix-class] RFC: Name and comments on my new module.

[luke saunders]

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:32 AM, John Napiorkowski <jjn1056 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need help for my module name, hoping for someone's creative insight.  Also would enjoy any comments.  This is a DBIC::Schema component and stand alone class this is like a $schema->populate on steroids.  What it does is make it easier when you are doing a first time setup and need to insert a bunch of rows, like the first time you deploy a new database, or after you update it.  It's not as full featured as DBIC::Fixtures, and is targeted more directly at making it easier to just take a perl structure, or one loaded from a configuration file, and setup your database.
>
> Basically all it does is take:
>
> my $setup_rows = [
>
>  {Gender => {
>    fields => 'label',
>    data => {
>      male => 'male',
>      female => 'female',
>    }}},
>
>  {Person  => {
>    fields => ['name', 'age', 'gender', 'emails'],
>    data => {
>      john => ['john', 38, "!Index:Gender.male", {
>        fields => ['email', 'private'],
>        data => {
>          personal => ['hey at home.net', 1],
>          work => ['j at biz.com', 0],
>        },
>      }],
>      jane => ['jane', 40, '!Index:Gender.female'],
>    }}},
>
>  {FriendList => {
>    fields => ['person', 'friend'],
>    data => {
>      john_jane => ['!Index:Person.john', '!Index:Person.jane'],
>    }}},
> ];
>
> and let's you put rows into your schema with:
>
> $schema->populate_via_hashref($setup_rows);
>
> The main thing over the standard populate -or even insert- is that each $setup_rows is traversed via a visitor class so it can process the values and expand a macro-like "!Macro:args".  This makes it easier to do things like setup a database with relationships and not have to predetermine the keys, or include defaults dates (with something like "!Date:now' or "!Date::yesterday") or even base inserted values on %ENV.  Your thoughts on additional builtin macros wanted.
>
> I'm actually using DBIC::Fixtures myself now, but I wrote this for some previous jobs and thought it might come in handy for someone else.  It's probably not what you want to use if you are installing 100's of rows, need to dump and reload your db, since DBIC::Fixtures is great for that.  It's got a decent test suite and all, just need a good name for it to live on CPAN.  I just need a name (been using DBIx::Class::PopulateViaHashRef internally) and your comments.
>

Sounds interesting. Any chance of seeing the code and tests?

Cheers,
Luke.