[cgiapp] Ideas to enhance CGI::App (Re: [cgiapp] A similar project: CAM::App)

[Mark Stosberg <suppressed>]

On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Vladimir Bogdanov wrote:

> I'd also like to chip in on the effort.
>
> I have worked on a custom module based on CGI-App which features such
> components as session management, easier template management from within
> the code (you may pic and choose which 'view' to present to the client
> etc), database access among a few other
> components.  Although it has worked great for me on a number of my
> projects, I still see a lot of gray areas that were left uncovered.  I'm
> sure if we pull our efforts together, we may vastly extend the base
> CGI-App functionality (and still keep within the scope of what it was
> set out to mean and do).
>
> Cheers,
> Vlad Bogdanov.
>
> Vroom, Tim wrote:
>
> >I agree.  I love CGI::Application but would like
> >it even better if it was easier to manage sessions,
> >error pages and perhaps some other things.
> >
> >I'd definitely be game for contributing to such
> >a project.
> >
> >--Tim Vroom
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Mark Stosberg [mailto:suppressed
> >Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 5:22 PM
> >To: CGI::App list
> >Subject: [cgiapp] A similar project: CAM::App
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> >I thought some of you would be interested in comparing CGI::App with
> >CAM::App-- a module I just came across that has similar goals:
> >
> >http://search.cpan.org/search?module=CAM::App

Perhaps some of what needs to happen here is just some good
documentation and examples. For example, Data::FormValidator and
HTML::FillInForm work great for handling form submissions with CGI::App,
but it may not be clear on how to get started with that for a new user.

For session management, there are a lot of options. CGI::Session looks
like a great solution that works with CGI::App (though I've yet to test
it myself). A "CGI::App with CGI::Session" document with examples would
be really nice.

For some other parts, it make more sense to write some additional code
to make it work. Here's my own starter list of CGI::App related
functionality and how I think it could be addressed:

FEATURE: Managing a global configuration file
SOLUTION: documentation and example

FEATURE: Session management
SOLUTION: "CGI:APP + Your::Fav::SessionManager HOWTO" document

FEATURE: Database handle management, allowing easy access to the
database handle from anywhere in the project.
SOLUTION: code example

FEATURE: Form Validation and Refilling
SOLUTION: A How-to document, similar to this one, but perhaps
more CGI::App specific:
http://mark.stosberg.com/Tech/perl/form-validation/
There is probably a bit of glue code in this probably space that would
be useful to distribute. See my "error_marks" routine here for an
example:
http://mark.stosberg.com/Tech/perl/form-validation/display-code.cgi

FEATURE: Have some config options globally available in the template
SOLUTION: "How-To" document for each favorite Templating solution.
A sample overridden load_tmpl() function that does this could be
provided as an example.

FEATURE: Handle sending generic error messages to the browser.
SOLUTION: Distribute sample code and template for this.

########

My underlying thinking is that I like that CGI::App generally does one
thing and does it well. I'm hesitant to add more to it that
needlessly ties it to a specific solution in another problem space.
However, I would still love to have more documentation and code that
enables a developer to quickly build a /complete/ web application with
CGI::App.

I'm motivated to do this both to speed development, and to create some
more standardization for those who interested in making their
CGI::Application projects a little more compatible.

  Mark




--
http://mark.stosberg.com/

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